


until the stars rain down from the heavens

by aurilly



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (but only once they're older), 1930s, 1940s, Childhood Friends, Coming of Age, Fish out of Water, Friends to Lovers, Growing Up Together, Identity Porn, Idiots in Love, M/M, Secret Relationship, Slow Burn, Time Travel, accidental magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-03-07 14:15:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 110,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3175780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki is only looking for attention when he runs away from the palace. Instead, he finds a friend. And a mystery.</p><p>It takes a few false starts and a lot of complicated scheduling, but the boy from the impossible town becomes the clock by which Loki measures his life. (It isn’t just a metaphor. There’s literally a watch involved. And some lost marbles.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_"Suppose we have only dreamed or made up all those things. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies playing a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow."_  
(C. S. Lewis, _The Silver Chair_ )

  


Years of exploring the palace’s shadows and forgotten corners had made Loki adept at sneaking out. There were gaps between bars and walls that Thor—already too broad, despite his tender years—could no longer slip through. Within minutes of creeping out of his room, Loki was free. Free from the tutors who called his cleverness diabolical, free from the servants who ascribed evil intentions to his most innocent accidents, free from the laughter of Thor’s new friends.

Of all the hurts he was nursing today, the last one ached the most. Loki had looked out the window that morning and seen Thor giving Fandral a helmet to wear while they played. A helmet Thor had made himself and given to Loki. Lent it to Fandral as though it meant nothing. As though Fandral had not insulted Loki just the day before. As though Loki meant no more to Thor than any of his new friends.

He knew where everyone would expect him to go. First, they would check the library. They’d send the servants to scour the darkest corners where the oldest and most interesting books were shelved. They would search the highest towers, for Loki had been known to climb up there with Thor on occasion to watch the sunsets and dangle paper birds in front of people’s windows. By the time they’d fruitlessly searched all his usual haunts, it would be night, and the whole of Asgard would be in a state of panic.

It had better be. Anything less would be proof irrefutable that none of them cared.

Eventually they would ask Heimdall, but only as a last resort, for his gifts were meant for greater tasks than locating runaway children.

Once he was out of sight of the palace guards, he ran down to the fishing pier as fast as his little legs would carry him. The tiny sailboat he had noticed a few weeks ago still bobbed and pulled against its restraints.

While father had taught both him and Thor the theory of sailing, this was Loki’s first time trying his hand. Moving the boom proved harder exercise than he anticipated, a drain meant for arms longer and burlier than his. However, his temper drove him forward and gave him strength he didn’t know he had. His desperate, inaudibly prayed desire to remain unnoticed was granted; he and his little boat slipped out of the marina unremarked.

It took a couple of hours to cross the bay, but the winds were in his favor. Soon, the grey peaks of the barren island that he’d picked out as today’s destination came into view. There was no dock along the flinty beach, but he threw a rope and tied it to the very sharpest rock on the shore.

Despite its emptiness, this place was legendary. Loki’s nurse delighted in telling him frightening tales, and Loki had always lapped them up. These islands were haunted, she said. Nothing had ever lived here, not even plants. Yet the beaches and hillsides were littered with skeletons of men and unknown beasts. And there had been heard voices, impossible ghosts. Legend told of sailors who had stopped for a rest on their way to the capital city and had never been seen again. Strange things had always happened here, to the point where no one dared to stop any more.

Loki would show them. They—well, Fandral—had called him a coward, a skinny little weakling, but Loki was not afraid of anything.

He wandered around, but there was nothing to see. Just rocks, rocks and more rocks, in boring formations and jutting over cave entrances. It was all exactly as the stories had told, except less interesting.

It soon began to rain. He could see that the clouds went on for miles; this downpour would not cease any time soon. He ran into a cave to hide. He wished he had paid more attention to the lesson the gamekeeper had once given him and Thor about building fires from flint and matches. It was cold in here, and dark, too. He couldn’t read the lovely books he had brought or play with his toys. The rain had made the water too rough for his beginner sailing skills, so he couldn’t return home. And there weren’t even any ghosts to boast to Thor about, nothing impressive about this adventure at all.

Everything was terrible.

And what if they weren’t looking for him? What if he froze to death here, all alone? Loki’s imagination, with nothing else to stimulate it, cavorted in dark directions. They would find nothing but his carcass. An unidentifiable skeleton like the one outside the cave entrance.

“There has never been a boy more miserable than me,” he complained bitterly, from his very depths. “Never, in all of eternity, nor in any of the realms, has there been or will there be anyone more unfortunate.”

The strength of his despair shocked even him. He fell down, suddenly exhausted and dizzy. As if he lacked reasons to feel miserable, now he had fallen ill, too, and the healers were too far away to help.

Shaking with this fit, or whatever it was, he whispered to himself again, even more fervently this time, “I defy the universe itself to show me anyone who could ever feel more wretched.”

A new wave of nausea accompanied his words, but something distracted him from the pain. Through his watering eyes he spied a bright spot farther along in the cave that he hadn’t noticed before. Daylight coming in from a different entrance, perhaps. It took a few moments for the fit to pass, but once he could walk again, he reached for his things and went to explore. It took only a minute to traverse the narrow corridor of rock and come out on the other side.

The sight that greeted him was markedly different from the side of the island he had landed on.

Below the rocky hillside he was standing on, the landscape transformed into rolling green fields that cascaded down to a beach. In opposition to all the books and stories about these uninhabited islands, Loki could see an entire settlement in the valley.

It wasn’t raining here, but that came as little surprise. Loki remembered his lessons on the phenomena of weather patterns around mountain ranges. It was a fascinating one that even Thor had sat up for.

On his way down to the delicious looking fields before him, Loki heard a whimper. He turned this way and that, trying to spot the animal. A small boy of about his age sat crouched behind a tree with his face buried between his knees, in a position not unlike the one Loki had assumed in the cave mere moments ago. All Loki could see of him was tousled black hair and a trickle of blood running from a scrape on his shin that had not yet scabbed.

The sight of another dark-haired boy was enough to make him stop. Other than himself, and Sif after he had cut her hair, almost everyone in Asgard was blond.

“Hello?” he said.

The boy looked up. Tears ran down his face as swiftly and as steadily as blood ran down his leg.

Loki immediately turned up his nose in scorn.

(Never mind that he had just finished having a good cry himself.)

“Where’d you come from?” the boy asked, quickly wiping his eyes and getting to his feet.

“The other side of the mountain. There’s a cave that takes you through.”

The boy looked up at the rocks. “The other side? It’s a cliff. There’s nothing there but the sea.”

The boy was a simpleton, Loki could see, with only the barest knowledge of geography. Never mind that Loki himself hadn’t known until a minute ago that there was a settlement here, and would have said the same about this side of the island.

“I would hardly call it a sea,” Loki said haughtily. “It only took me a couple of hours to sail here from the palace.”

“Palace?”

“Yes, of course.”

The boy looked at him for a minute, befuddled, and then his eyes traveled to Loki’s traveling bag. 

“What’s that?” he asked.

“These are my things,” Loki replied, not sure what exactly the question was.

“Never seen a bag like that before. Show me?”

Loki had always enjoyed displaying his treasures, but he lacked opportunities to do so. He had no friends besides Thor, who had not only already seen all of Loki’s possessions, but also had duplicates of his own.

They sat together and Loki took the boy through the life necessities he had placed into the small satchel for the day: books, sweet biscuits, a cloak, the ornamental dagger his uncle had given him, puzzle-based toys, interesting rocks, a few flasks of juice from the pitcher outside his room. The honest wonder with which the boy greeted each item mollified Loki. Usually, it was Thor who held others in such rapt attention and awe. By the time the boy had cooed and admired all of these treasures, Loki’s temper had almost returned to normal—still stormy, but on the wane.

“What’s that?” the boy asked one last time.

The bag was empty. The boy’s acquisitive eyes were now fixed on the shiny object sticking out of Loki's pocket.

“Oh, this?” Loki scoffed. “It’s a watch, of course.”

“Never seen one like that before. How’s it work?”

Loki took the poor ignorant through the mechanisms. It told minutes, weeks, years, seasons, cardinal directions, everything, in a constantly rotating, endless stream of wheels and pictures, like every other watch Loki had ever seen.

“Where’d you get something like that?” the boy breathed. “Did you swipe it?”

“Why would I steal it? It’s nothing special. You should see the ones Father has.”

“Looks pretty special to me. I don’t have anything near as neat as you’ve got.”

“What's in that bag tied to your belt loop?” Loki had noticed this some time ago and had been itching with curiosity about it.

“Oh, my marbles and jacks. Most valuable things I own. Wanna see?”

“Yes, indeed.”

They were very pretty stones, even prettier than Loki’s, he noted jealously, and the game as described sounded very amusing. Never before had Loki encountered someone, other than Thor, who possessed something he wanted so desperately. But this boy, with his unwashed face, badly cut hair and thin, ugly clothing, must have been destitute indeed. Not even Loki could quite begrudge him his one treasure in life.

“I want to play,” he demanded, although that was not entirely what he wanted.

“Sure thing.”

The boy taught him a trick of the wrist that, with practice, would make the ball go where he wanted.

“I’m James, by the way,” he said as they played.

“What a pleasure to meet you,” Loki replied stiffly, as he had been taught to say when subjects greeted him. Never before today had he meant the words.

They played for a minute more before James blurted out, “Well, aren’t you gonna tell me _your_ name?”

“Don’t you already know it?”

“‘Course not. I wouldn’t ask otherwise.”

“I am Loki Odinson.”

Loki expected James to blush and kneel in embarrassment for failing to recognize one of the heirs of the Realm Eternal, but nothing of the sort happened.

“Loki? What kind of name is that?”

“Mine. Haven’t you heard of me?”

James shrugged. “Never.”

“This is truly a backward little settlement. I wonder if you even pay your levies to the crown. When I return home, I will tell Father to reassert his dominion over this rebellious territory.”

James stared at him, looking stupid again. Then he laughed. Stupidity had never looked so pleasant.

“You know, I don’t understand half the things you say, but you’re all right.”

Somehow, merely ‘all right’ coming from James’s lips sounded more complimentary than the highest praise Loki had ever heard Thor receive.

“You’re all right, too.”

James’s little half-smile melted the last bit of sulk from Loki’s heart.

“Why were you crying before?” Loki asked.

The smile faltered and he regretted having said anything.

“My dad died a few weeks ago. My Ma calls me her brave little soldier because I haven’t cried once. But I couldn’t keep it in forever. Came up here today where no one’d see me.”

Loki, who, even in his worst moods, loved his father, could not conceive of such a horror. He remembered his dare back in the cave, his challenge to the universe to show him someone who could ever be more wretched than himself. Yes, here on the other side of the mountain, lived such a boy. Poor and dirty and lacking a father.

“I am sorry to hear it,” Loki said, stiffly again. He meant it more kindly than it came out, but he had little practice in calming the grief of others. Usually, it was others’ task to quell _his_ tears.

“It gets worse,” James continued. “We’re only here in Italy because he was in the Army. So now we have to leave. Me and my Ma and my sister.”

“You have a sister?” Loki asked.

James pulled a face. “Yeah, she’s really stupid.”

“I have a brother. He, too, can be… very stupid.”

They shared anecdotes about their elder siblings, voicing frustration and affection in equal measure. Loki didn’t understand half the situations James described, but he could piece together the gist of the stories well enough, so he hid his confusion and nodded along. James was less precious about what others thought of him and asked embarrassingly obvious questions without shame.

“Wish I’d thought of this game,” James said much later. “It’s a winner.”

“What game?” Loki asked.

“This one. Your made-up palace on the other side of the mountain, across a bay that doesn’t exist. I know you’re probably just from the British base on the other side of the river. But this is more fun.”

“It is no fiction,” Loki persisted. “Come, I'll show you.”

“No can do. It’s getting late. If I’m not home for supper soon, I’ll catch it. I bet you will, too.”

“Not I. At least, no more than I already will. I ran away, you see. A few hours more will make no difference.”

James whistled. “For real?”

“Once they inform Heimdall that I am gone, someone will come fetch me, rather soon, I wager.”

“You’re cool as a cucumber,” James said, impressed. “Running away, sailing around, climbing up mountains.”

Loki repressed a pleased wriggle. “I like to plan things.”

He kept to himself the truth that the best part of the day had been entirely unplanned—this visit, this afternoon spent with James.

“What are you gonna do until they come get you?” James asked. “Those biscuits you’ve got look good, but they wouldn’t be enough for me.”

“I don’t know,” Loki replied, seeing James’s point. “I suppose I ought to go back into the cave and wait.”

“Why don’t you come home with me? My ma won’t mind another kid at the table, not if I tell her you’re lost, which it sounds like you are. If your people can track you to the top of the mountain, I’m sure they can track you to our house. And in the meanwhile, we can keep playing.”

“I would like that.”

Together, they made their way down to the village. It was a strange place, with a different sort of architecture than Loki had ever seen. He was too young and sickly to have visited much beyond Asgard’s capital city, but he had seen pictures in books about all the different kinds of dwellings across the realms. None of them had looked anything like these, though.

James’s house was exponentially smaller than any Loki had ever visited, but had a warm, comfortable, very foreign sort of charm.

“Ma? Becca?” James called. When no one answered, he stood in the middle of the room with his hands akimbo. “Don’t know where they could be. They’re always here.”

From outside, they heard a grown-up woman calling for James, followed a knock on the door. Loki instinctively hid as James went to open it.

“I saw the light come on in here and came over,” he heard a woman say.

“Hi, Signora Bentivoglio. Do you know where Becca and my mother are?” James’s voice held a strange inflection. Loki, listening in, could understand the words just the same, but both James and the woman sounded slightly different in a way that he could not pinpoint, like a familiar melody played in a new key.

“She went to make arrangements for the move, a couple of towns over. She took Becca with her and asked me to keep a look out for you, since you’d run off. But I just heard from Signora Alezzi that there’s been a problem with the trains. No way for them to get back tonight. I expect you need someone to scrounge up some supper for you.”

“That would be awfully kind, Signora.”

Loki continued to listen while James and the woman negotiated arrangements. She had expected James to take his meal in her house, but James affected his most devastatingly sad manner, digging his toe into the floor and flopping his long hair over his limpid blue eyes. Peering from behind the curtain, Loki had never seen anyone work this kind of magic before. The blowsy signora practically swooned, letting James talk her into thinking that it was _her_ idea to give him a double portion of supper, into thinking that letting James eat it all alone in his own house was a wonderful plan. Together, they exited to get provisions from her kitchen, leaving Loki alone and amazed.

A few minutes later, James returned with a large, steaming pot. Together, he and Loki ladled long, skinny strips of something white into bowls, topped with a chunky, brownish-red sauce. 

“Why were you speaking so strangely just now?” Loki asked.

“To the signora? We were speaking Italian. I reckon you didn’t understand a word.”

“Of course I did. Every single one. Why wouldn’t I?”

James raised a quizzical eyebrow, as though he believed Loki to be lying, but didn’t want to insult him by saying so out loud. Instead, he explained, “My ma has always made us live in the villages instead of the army bases. Says it’s good to get to know the locals, pick up some of the language, unlike all the other Army brats. I’m real good at languages. Everybody says so. It’s why all the ladies in all the villages we’ve ever lived in love me. And we’ve lived in a lot of places. First France and then Germany and now here.”

The food on this side of the mountain could not have been more different from what Loki was accustomed to. He intended to ask the cooks to prepare some traditional peasant dishes one night soon, for he vastly preferred this meal to most of the formal banquets he had attended. James showed Loki the trick of swirling the strips around the tines of the eating implement and slurping it all into his mouth. They ate messily, competed for the loudest and longest slurp, put their elbows on the table and their feet up on the empty seats. Delightful. Loki never been allowed to be this impolite at mealtimes. James said this may be no palace, but his ma was just as strict as any queen, so it was a treat for him, too.

After washing up (Signora Bentivoglio would be very angry if her pot was brought back dirty), James and Loki stayed up late playing marbles. When their wrists tired, James showed Loki bits of hard paper, each with different numbers, and some with faces. The myriad permutations of games that could be played with them was astounding.

The signora returned. Loki scrambled to hide again.

“To bed with you, young man,” she scolded James, “or I’ll tell your mother you were up until all hours.”

“I can’t believe no one has come for me yet,” Loki said when she had gone again.

“I’m glad they haven’t. That just means you can stay over. Come on. I’ll find you some pajamas.”

James’s bed was much narrower than Loki’s back home, but even so, it was wide enough to allow two skinny little boys to lie side by side. In the dark, James reached his hand across the space between them. Loki let his fingers be found.

“Today’s the first good day I’ve had since dad died,” James said. “I wish I’d met you before. It’s rotten timing.”

“What do you mean?” Loki asks.

“We have to move, like I was telling you before. That’s what my ma was arranging today. We’re leaving for New York pretty soon.”

“Where is that?”

“You’ve never heard of New York?” James sounded incredulous.

“You’ve never heard of Asgard.”

“Yeah, I guess we’re even.”

“Is it far?” Loki asked.

“Yeah. Really far. As far as can be. The other side of the world.”

The thought was insupportable and Loki wracked his brain for a solution. “What if I ask Father to procure your mother a position somewhere closer to here, in the capital city?”

“What, in Rome?”

“No, you idiot. In Asgard. Where I’m from. That way, you won’t have to leave.”

“It won’t work. The arrangements are already set. And Ma’s got family in New York. She actually wants to go back. It’s a nice offer, though. Thanks.”

Already, Loki could feel the tempest of disappointment brewing in his heart. He had finally made a friend, one for his own, who looked at him the way everyone looked at Thor. He had made a friend, and now that friend was to leave him. The misery he had been running from threatened to catch up with him.

“Perhaps we can see one another again before you go,” Loki suggested.

“Sure. How about Wednesday?”

“Wednesday?” Loki’s first guess was that the word was the name of the hillside.

James didn’t seem to understand Loki’s confusion. “Yeah, three days from now. We’ll meet where we met today, by that big tree up the hill. First thing in the morning.”

“I’ll be there. No matter how much trouble I’m in when I get back. I’ll sneak out again if I have to.”

“Wish I had your pluck.”

And there it was again: that thrilling sense that someone thought Loki was the bravest of all boys. After Fandral’s insults the day before, this gratification was as intoxicating as the mead the palace guards drank after hours.

Loki had to find a way to keep James. He had to.

Despite their sweaty palms, they continued to hold hands, and drifted off to sleep.

A crowing noise disturbed Loki much earlier than he’d ever been woken. At first he wondered what he was doing in this hovel, on this strange bed made not of feathers, but of metal springs that creaked when he moved. Then he turned over, saw James sleeping next to him, and remembered.

He knew he should return to the cave. James had to go to school and wouldn’t be available to play. Pretty as this village was, he had little interest in exploring it alone. By now, the rain on the other side of the mountain should have stopped. He could sail home and make everyone feel terrible for having abandoned him.

“James,” he whispered, shaking his friend to a drowsy half-wakefulness. “I have to go.”

“Mmmhhh?” James mumbled without opening his eyes.

“Three days hence, yes?” Loki asked urgently, wanting to ensure the date would be kept.

“Wednesday, yeah.” James rolled over again and continued to snore lightly.

“James,” Loki said again with a nudge.

“What?”

“May I borrow the jacks and marbles? Just until Wednesday. I want to show Thor how to play.”

“Sure.” Given how deeply James loved his marbles, this loan meant a great deal. “Hey, can I borrow your watch? I want to see how the day-tracker thing works. We can make it a trade.”

“If you like.” Loki didn’t care. He was getting the much greater treasure in this deal.

“You swear you’ll be back, right? I’m gonna need those marbles when I go to New York.”

Impulsively, Loki pressed the watch and the very biggest and prettiest of the marbles into James’s palm. He slapped his hand down on top, joining them and trapping the objects between them. He intertwined their fingers and squeezed so hard that James winced. The desperation that had rent him at the thought of James's departure returned, even more violently.

“I swear, by… by everything,” Loki said, shaking with more feeling than he had ever roused—urgent, essential, burning feeling that outstripped his already sizable vocabulary. “I swear I’ll come back and we’ll see each other again. And now you swear.”

“You sure are dramatic,” James said. “But okay, I swear. By everything.”

At the words, a light began to emanate from their joined palms. The objects grew hot between them, burning into their skin, but Loki did not let go, not even when James whimpered in pain. In a moment, the light died down again.

“Woah,” James marveled. “What was that?”

“I have no idea,” Loki replied. He had assumed it was a usual property of the marble, but apparently not, judging by James’s reaction. Whatever had happened, he felt terribly drained, as he had back in the cave. It took him a moment to recover his breath and strength.

“Well,” James said when Loki was finally able to walk again. “See ya, Loki.”

“Until Wednesday.”

Loki passed only a couple of grown-ups on his way through the village. It was still dark out and they were too tired to heed the little boy dashing madly through the streets towards the fields. He ran all the way up the hill to where the grass stopped growing, replaced by rocks, and then even further up. It took a combination of hands and sure-footedness to make his way back to where he remembered having come out. In the slanting dawn, the trees all looked the same. He tied a piece of his shirt to the closest tree so that James would be able to find the spot.

When Loki got back to the cave, he poked his head outside. It was still raining. He was surprised the storm had lasted this long, but it explained why no one had come for him. After such a nice day and night, Loki was feeling more charitable. The water looked terribly choppy. Perhaps too choppy for any of the boats in the harbor. Perhaps they had Heimdall keeping an eye on him and knew he had been well-fed and well-sheltered, and thus were a little less worried.

Despite having nothing to do except practice playing marbles by himself in the dirt, the day passed uncommonly quickly. It felt like only a couple of hours until nightfall. The falling darkness encouraged him to drift off into a nap.

The sound of boots and clanking armour shattered his slumber.

“He is here!”

Still asleep, Loki felt himself swept up into loving arms and cradled to a neck. He couldn’t see her, but he could smell that this was his mother, come for him at last.

“My darling, what are you doing here? We’ve been so worried.”

“Was so lonely,” Loki mumbled, too sleepy to answer in full.

“Never do that again, do you hear me? Never. I couldn’t bear it another time. What if it had gotten too dark to look for you? I can’t imagine an entire night spent not knowing where you were.”

“But I _was_ gone all night.”

“Where are the healers?” the queen called. “We must get him to the healers. My Loki is raving.”

He was too cold and sleepy to protest, so he let himself be coddled. He barely remembered the sail home. He barely registered being taken back to the palace, his mother and the healers clucking over him for hours.

He woke in his own bed. Thor bounded into his room and jumped on him.

“Oh, Thor, go away,” Loki said, burying his head under the pillow.

“You’d better pretend to be as sick as Mother thinks you are,” Thor whispered quickly, “or else there’s nothing that will stop you from catching it from Father. Here, I brought you that hot compress you lent me last time I had to feign a fever.”

Loki was wise enough to accept the help that was offered him, so he clutched the compress between his hands and rested his face on it. Soon, he was honestly warm, sweating and clammy to the touch.

As he lay there, Thor nattered at him about the ruckus that had been made when they’d found out he was missing.

“I can’t believe you went to the Haunted Hills. And all alone. What was it like? Did you see any ghosts?”

“There aren’t any ghosts. Those are only stupid stories. But I did find a village on the other side of the mountain.”

“A village?”

“The people there are very poor, but it is such a pretty place. They don’t know anything about us here in the city, just as we’ve never heard anything about them.”

“That can’t be right, Loki. I’ve sailed all around those islands with Father, that time you were too ill to accompany us. There’s nothing there. No villages.”

“I tell you there is.” There was little Loki hated more than being accused of a lie he wasn’t actually telling. Hotly and ill-advisedly, he continued, “I’ll take you if you don’t believe me. I’m to go back on Wednesday.”

“What is Wednesday?”

“It’s what you call ‘three days hence’ in their peasant idiom.” That reminded Loki of something. “Why did Mother think I had only been gone a few hours?”

Thor furrowed his eyebrows. “Because you had. We realized you were gone at supper time, asked Heimdall where you were, and then Mother went to fetch you straightaway. And what do you mean, you’re going back?”

Loki discounted Thor’s words. He very clearly didn’t know what he was talking about, as usual. But more pressing than the confusion was Loki’s impulse to hold his secret where no one could take it from him. But then he remembered the marbles in his pocket. The entire reason for borrowing them had been to play with Thor. He saw now that he could not do so without telling him everything. Affection for Thor and a desire to best his brother at a new game triumphed over his secretive nature.

He watched with delight as his brother’s eyes grew wider and wider with each word of the tale.

“Either this is the most elaborate and tiresome of your lies,” Thor said at the end, “or you have had an adventure for the ages.”

“You cannot tell a soul. They’d never let me go back if they knew.”

“I won’t. I promise. But in exchange, you have to take me with you. I want to meet this friend of yours.”

The usual panic immediately set in. What if James preferred Thor to Loki? Thor had enough of his own friends. He was not allowed to have Loki’s, too. It was too late to refuse, however. Once having taken an idea into his head, Thor was incapable of letting go. Loki tried to tell himself that of course James would continue to look upon Loki as the more interesting of the two.

“Oh, all right,” Loki grumbled. “You can come with me. But if you get us caught, I’ll…”

“You’ll what?”

“I haven’t thought of what yet, but it will be horrible, I promise you.”

Thor grinned. “If you say so. Now, I’d better go before anyone finds me here. And remember, you’ve caught a terrible cold. Like when you were sick last summer. And the summer before that. And the…”

“Yes, yes, I know. I’m always ill. You don’t need to remind me.”

* * *

Thor was correct. Instead of being punished for having thrown the entire palace into alarm, Loki’s ‘illness’ meant that he got away with merely a scolding and some nasty medicines to drink.

On the appointed day, Thor pretended to have caught it, too. They asked to spend the day in Loki’s sickroom together, undisturbed. After breakfast they crept down to the shore and stole the same little boat. The travel went much more smoothly this time with someone there to help Loki with the ropes and the boom.

Thor quailed a little as they tied up the boat on the island’s beach. “Are you sure about this?”

“It’s a little late to be afraid, you oaf. I’ve told you. There aren’t any ghosts.”

For perhaps the first time ever, Thor trailed dutifully behind Loki.

“I don’t see anything,” Thor said when they entered the cave. “You said there was a light, didn’t you?”

“Perhaps it’s raining there this time, so the sunshine isn’t coming through.”

It really _was_ curious what a difficult time he was having finding the passageway. It had been so obvious before. Loki was already impatient, as Thor had slowed him down on their way out of the palace. He was already slightly late for his appointment.

“You’ve had your joke, Loki,” Thor eventually said. “Come off it now. There’s no opening here, there never was. Just as there isn’t any village on the other side of the mountain. I don’t know why I listened to you, even after I’d already seen for myself. You brought me here to frighten me, didn’t you? Or was it to get me into trouble?”

“There was a passage here, I swear! I don’t know what’s happened.”

“This is one of your rottoner pranks. And now we’ve missed leftovers from last night’s feast. I’m hungry.”

Thor stomped out of the cave. Loki let him go; he was too busy still feeling the walls for the passageway. But Thor was right. There was nothing there, not even signs of anyone having come in and boarded up the hole.

If it hadn’t been for the marbles that sat in his pocket, he would have felt sure he’d dreamed the whole thing up.

Eventually, he followed Thor out and they sailed back to the mainland in stony silence, with Thor out of sorts, Loki baffled, and both of them embarrassed, though for different reasons. No one found out that they’d slipped away, but Thor was so annoyed that he didn’t speak to Loki for a week.

Loki hated being made to look foolish. A prank was only fun if he was the one executing it, but today it was as though both of them had been placed on the wrong end of one. And now his only friend was gone.

He wondered if they’d ever meet again, but given how far away and remote this New York place sounded, the chances seemed slim.


	2. Chapter 2

Through a strange occurrence here and a disastrous one there, it soon came to be known that Loki possessed a seidr whose strength was almost unheard of in Asgard. The discovery explained many unfairly judged moments in the prince’s life. Unpracticed and uncontrolled in the hands of a child, Loki’s accidental magical outbursts had frightened not only the staff, but the entire court over the years. However, the explanation failed to dissolve the strangeness that clung to him. In fact, the explanation, coupled with his personal demeanour, seemed to cement him even further as an oddity to be avoided. Magic, tolerated when the king or queen practiced it, was not something widely appreciated in Asgard.

“Why does Loki have magic and I do not?” Thor asked their mother.

“Each child inherits a special gift from his parents, dear,” Mother said after a long pause. “You have your father’s strength, and Loki has my magic.”

The only wrinkle was that, while Frigga tried to teach him how to control the power that welled up inside of him, she could not. Not fully. The things Loki was able to do visibly confused her, and simple exercises that she performed without effort were completely out of reach for him.

“If I have this gift from you, why does it work so differently?” he asked, frustrated one afternoon.

“I do not know, my love.”

He had become adept enough at lying to spot a falsehood coming from another’s lips, but he was still very young, and not yet wise enough to divine the truth. 

He complemented her teachings with more books from the library. In addition, Frigga wrote out simplified treatises in her own hand. It was these, more than any others, that eventually helped him control his powers. When he asked what books she had copied them from and what kind of magic this was, she told him that she hadn’t copied them at all; she had devised the lessons herself with Loki’s particularities in mind.

More lies, but the lessons worked, so he did not question their provenance, for fear the source would dry up.

* * *

His obsessive studies led to even more solitude, and thus, more resentful hours that he spent watching Thor out the window playing with his other friends. As the decades passed—so many of them drifting by, yet so little changing—Loki’s thoughts returned time and again to his experience in the Haunted Hills. 

That day must have been one of those instances of his magical abilities unknowingly spilling out of him. Thor had been correct; there was nothing on the other side of that mountain, never had been. But upon reviewing the lore about the place with new eyes, Loki finally saw it for what it was: a soft spot in the fabric of the universe. No wonder there were tales of ghosts and voices, inexplicable skeletons. It was a place where people sometimes blundered from one place to another, and perhaps found themselves unable to get back. He had somehow accessed the properties of the place that day, but the way had shut again when he’d returned with Thor.

Armed with books of spells, a few potentially useful objects, and a lot of curiosity, Loki prepared for another excursion. He was scarcely any older than he’d been the first time, entirely too young to be allowed to sail off on his own. With a simple spell of distraction for the sailors, he was able to take the same little boat out unseen.

Sitting cross-legged in the cave he had used before, Loki chanted a few promising runes, but nothing happened. He used all the spells his mother had taught him, and others that he hoped she would never find out he knew. Nothing worked. The portal refused to open. It seemed that the last time he had, entirely accidentally, invoked something that he could not replicate. However, accidents such as these had been known to occur. Like the greatest discoveries, much of the deepest, most legendary magic had been accomplished accidentally. A sorcerer’s greatest asset was his control, but only by losing that control could he tap into the universe’s most powerful secrets. In this inherent contradiction lay the lure and attraction that magic cast over its casters.

Loki tried to think back to that day, to the particular circumstances. He thought back to his mood, his despair over whatever triviality that had upset him enough to run away. He remembered daring the universe to show him someone more miserable than himself.

“I dare you, universe,” he whispered, just as he had before. “I dare you to show me anyone who could be more unhappy.”

But nothing happened. He didn’t feel the wave of energy pulse out of him, the exhilarating, exhausting sensation of magic accomplished. He was being too rational, too controlled, and not _feeling_ nearly enough.

He tried to rouse the same amount of desperate despondency he had felt that day—the kind of raw, uncontrolled emotion that was necessary for the elemental power he was dealing with here. He repeated the words to himself, recalling to mind every hurt or slight that he had ever received. It didn’t take long until he was practically boiling with rage and unhappiness. He looked up and saw a faint light coming from a hole in the cave wall.

He’d done it.

He plunged through the passageway. However, instead of the pretty hillside with the picturesque village down in the valley, he found himself in a dimly lit interior. Looking behind him, he could see a shadow marking the way back to the cave. 

He heard footsteps approaching and hid behind a strange set of metal shelves. 

“I got the new Call of Duty this weekend,” one man was saying to another as they strolled down the corridor. “The zombie levels are pretty awesome.”

“I got it, too. You want to play online some time?”

The two men, dressed in the oddest of clothes, did not seem to notice the dark shadow in their path. In fact, they walked right through it. However, instead of disappearing into the cave, they continued on their way. 

There was nothing of interest to explore in the corridor, so Loki ran to slip through the door the two men had exited before it snapped shut. 

The room was dark, and Loki could not find where they kept the lamps. Every few seconds, something beeped. This was a noise Loki had never heard before. A more annoying, oppressive, ominous sound than he had ever imagined. He needed to make it stop. He needed to find the light and make it stop before he lost his mind.

The only illumination in the room came from a strange kind of parchment. It was black, but the words appeared to be made of yellow light. As an avid reader who longed to be able to continue his habit in the dark, Loki had oft dreamed of such a device. He stepped closer to it. The word “heartbeat” sat near the top, with a number beside it. Below was written “blood pressure” and “temperature”. A line drawn in light curved and danced below the words, shifting with every damnable beep.

Focused on getting closer to the magical parchment, Loki crashed into a wall. As he felt alongside it, his fingers caught on a nub. Upon pushing it, the room flooded with light. Looking up, he saw before him an enormous tank. Inside the tank was what might have been—though Loki hoped it wasn’t—a person. He couldn’t make out any features through the not-quite-quite water that surrounded him, but the outline looked like a man. Cords ran from the tank into the lit parchment. 

The writing was about the man in the tank, Loki realized. _His_ heartbeat, _his_ blood pressure, _his_ temperature. 

The man was alive. Perpetually drowning, but never allowed to die.

Loki scrambled back, horrified. The last time, the universe had shown him, in James, only enough misery to teach him a gentle lesson. However, this time it had shown him, without question, the most wretched, unfortunate creature in existence.

Desperate to escape from this nightmare, Loki ran for the door, but he could not open it. He began pressing all the nubs he found at random, hoping one would let him out the same way it had turned on the lights. But all that happened was that a cacophony of hideous beeps and a horrible blaring noise deafened him. The lights began to flicker in an erratic fashion that made him feel ill. The numbers on the parchment began to change.

Through the door, Loki heard a platoon’s worth of footsteps running towards him. 

_Open the door and let me out,_ he whispered. _Please let me out of here._

He stepped back just in time to keep from being smashed in the nose when the door swung open and more soldiers dressed like the ones he had seen before stormed in. Loki slipped through their outstretched arms.

Shouts of “Come back here!” and “Hey, you!” and “How’d a little kid get in here?” followed him as he ran for his life down the corridor and through the shadowy portal. 

He collided into a sharp piece of rock in the cave. He drew his dagger in case the soldiers had followed him, but no one came through. He was safe. 

It took some time and many draughts of water before his heart stopped racing. 

Loki had not been entirely scared off, but after that ordeal, he no longer wanted to let the universe pick his destination for him. No, what he wanted was a pleasant adventure to cool his nerves. An adventure more like the last time.

Perhaps that was it, he reasoned. Perhaps if he honed in on James instead of leaving his encounters up to higher powers. Over the years, the same frustrations and loneliness that had initially driven him to this cave had only worsened. Discovering magic had distracted him, but nothing had substantially changed. He was barely more noticeable than the shadow in the corridor he had just run through.

Loki reached into his pocket and pulled out the marble, the souvenir that proved the first adventure had not taken place solely in his imagination. He sat on the ground, rolling it between his fingers and thinking of that day. As the memories washed over him, he began to smile.

Before he’d even tried any spells, the passageway, which had disappeared, returned. The light was different this time, which gave him hope that he would find himself anywhere but with the man in the tank. He went through again and found himself in a dirty, teeming street, too crowded for anyone to notice his miraculous appearance. Loki spun around and around, unsure as to why he had been sent here.

Then he spotted him. A familiar mop of dark curls, a remembered gait.

“James!” Loki ran after him.

James didn’t appear to hear him, but no surprise, as this city’s din would have drowned out much louder voices.

“James!” he shouted again. Loki finally caught up with the boy and tried to spin him around.

“Hey, what the—” When he saw Loki, James’s eyes widened. “You!”

“I told you I’d come back,” Loki said.

“How did you get here?”

“The same way as before.”

James snorted. “Hate to break it to you, but the story you peddled last time won’t work. This is New York City. There aren’t any caves.”

“But I…” Loki had expected this to be difficult to explain, but he didn’t appreciate this hostile tone. It almost seemed as though James wasn’t happy to see him.

To prove the suspicion, James said, “I don’t wanna talk to you.”

“James…”

“No one even calls me James anymore. You’re behind the times, pal. Everybody calls me Bucky now.”

“Bucky? Why?” Loki lowered his voice at the thrilling prospect that had occurred to him. “Are you living in hiding?”

“What? No.” James began to laugh, almost despite himself. The befuddled but amused look that Loki remembered fondly from their day together made a sporting effort to appear, but James scrunched his face and swatted it away. More gruffly he continued, “Look, what’s it to you what I go by these days?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Loki replied curtly, feeling hurt and furious and disappointed.

He turned to leave, mostly so that James would not see the tears that were welling up. He would _not_ be rejected by a member of the peasantry. He would not allow this gross disrespect.

He walked a few steps, ready to go back to the spot where he’d appeared, but James grabbed his hand and pulled him back.

“Wait, stop.”

“Why should I?” Caught between his pride and his loneliness, Loki cast about for the right tone—harsh enough to chastise this behavior but lenient enough to allow room for a reconciliation. “This is hardly the welcome I expected, nor is it one you have any right to give me. Have you forgotten who I am?”

“Well, that’s just the thing. I never knew who you were in the first place,” James said, now sounding more hurt than angry, sounding almost exactly as Loki felt.

Perhaps there had been a misunderstanding. Loki desperately hoped there had been. It was the only way he could allow himself to forgive James. He wanted so badly to do so.

“But I _told_ you,” he began to explain, but James interrupted with a rush of pent up frustration.

“Look, I waited for you that day. It was raining like cats and dogs, but I waited. I waited so long they sent a search party to look for me. Found me soaking wet and shivering under a tree, still waiting. I’d gotten hy… hyper… I don’t remember what it was called. Something that happens when you get too cold and wet. I had them ask at the British base and I asked the postmaster to ask the regional office for your address. You know what they told me? There was no Odinson family, never had been. I knew you were just playing with that whole palace-on-the-other-side-of-the-mountain thing, but it turned out everything you told me was a lie, too, even your name. I was laid up sick for two whole weeks because I waited for you. Didn’t get to do any of the things I wanted to do before we shipped off. Didn’t get to say goodbye to any of my friends. I didn’t get to do nothin’, all because of a liar who didn’t show.”

Here, finally, was the show of emotion that Loki had been looking for. His mother had told him many times that people only took hurts to heart when they cared very much indeed. Loki, who spent most of his days as a throbbing wound, was able to recognize this quality in others.

“I didn’t lie to you. I swear.”

“Swearing,” James spat, though after his big outburst, most of the fight seemed to have gone out of him. “Like that means anything to you. You swore back then, too. You swore you'd come back.”

“I tried to keep our appointment, but the way was closed to me. I didn’t know how it worked then. I didn’t know how to control the magic. Today I finally succeeded.”

“The magic?” James asked skeptically.

“Yes. I’ve learned how to control my powers since last we met. That’s how I was finally able to find you today. I went back to the cave and thought about you and I… Here I am.”

“This is crazy talk.”

Accusations of insanity were equal with people disbelieving the truth in terms of filling Loki with blind rage.

“I am not mad!” he screamed, loudly enough that a few of the passersby stopped to look. 

“All right, all right, yikes,” James said softly, glancing around them in embarrassment and leading Loki by the shoulder towards a quiet corner between two buildings. “Calm down.”

“But you won’t believe me,” Loki choked, wishing he could hold mastery over his quavering voice. “I came all this way and went through all this trouble and you won’t believe me. What is the _point_ in telling the truth when people still won’t believe you?”

Loki would not cry. He _wouldn’t_. He had longed for this day, but everything was turning to ash before him. Italy had been lovely but this place was ugly and frightening and gave him a headache. Performing all this advanced magic had left him feeling weak and James no longer wanted to be friends and didn’t believe him and every time he blinked he was haunted by the image of the man in the tank and…

James was watching Loki’s desperate efforts to control his breathing. For all his anger, his hand remained on Loki’s shoulder, but instead of pushing him, it now attempted to soothe him. For all that he’d said he wanted nothing to do with Loki, something seemed to be keeping him here.

“You’re really not pulling my leg, are you?” he said after a few moments of studying Loki’s tense face.

“If I weren’t on my way to being a powerful sorcerer, we never would have met in the first place, much less ever again. And if I weren’t so generous, I’d have you arrested for speaking to me as you just did.”

“Oh brother,” James sighed. “I’d forgotten you were like this.” 

“Like what?”

James reached for Loki’s still clenched hand. “What have you got there?”

Loki slowly unfurled his fingers to reveal the marble.

“You kept it?” James asked.

“Of course. I promised to give it back to you, didn’t I?”

“Huh.” James looked thoughtful.

“What is it?”

James pulled his hands out of his pockets. Clutched in the left one was the watch Loki had given him.

Loki cocked a questioning eyebrow. “For someone who says he wants nothing to do with me…”

James shrugged. “It’s a neat watch. Plus, I like that I’m the only one who knows how to read it. Keeping this was a no-brainer. But you… I can’t believe you kept that stupid marble.”

“Stupid?” Loki had taken much enjoyment from the set, and had continued to look upon it as a treasure, a relic from an impossible adventure and a very nice day. He was hurt that James, who had treasured it in the first place, was now so dismissive of it.

“I stopped playing with marbles pretty soon after we moved here,” James said.

“Well, that makes sense, given that you no longer had any,” Loki said with a sneer. “I only kept this out of a sense of duty. It’s been years since I last played.”

“ _Years?_ Come on. That doesn’t even make any sense. It hasn’t even been that long.”

“Fine,” Loki replied, seeing that he had been caught in a lie, even though he didn’t understand how James had found him out. “It has been less than a year.”

“That’s more like it.” James finally smiled. “Look, I still don’t know what to think, but… friends?”

“Yes, of course, you dolt. Why do you think I went through all this trouble to get here?”

“Okay, all right. It’s just… magic? There’s no such thing.”

“Have you a more compelling explanation for how I appeared at the top of a mountain, was neither seen nor heard from again, and then reappeared here, in the middle of a street you happened to be traversing, in a place you told me was on the other side of the world, without knowing your address or even your surname?”

“No, but…”

“Well, then. Until you think of something more plausible, I suggest you believe me.”

“You scared me something awful, showing up like that,” James confessed. “It was as though I’d just, I don’t know, called you up out of thin air, just by thinking about you.”

“Perhaps you did.” Loki got an idea. “You were holding that watch and thinking of me?”

“Yeah.”

“At exactly the same moment when I was in the cave holding this marble and thinking of you?”

Simultaneously, they shouted, “Do you remember?”

“When we held hands and—”

“It started to glow and—”

“Do you think—”

“What _else_ could it be?”

“Magic,” James breathed. “For real?”

Loki closed his eyes and attempted to transform the watch in James’s hand into a flower, but…

“What are you doing?” James asked.

Loki squinted one eye open. He could feel the watch resisting him, clinging to its form as though protected by some much stronger enchantment than he was practicing right now. This had never happened before. It was such a little, insignificant thing; it shouldn’t have been giving him any trouble.

“Loki?” James asked.

“Oh, hush. Let me try again.”

This time, he focused on the waste receptacle standing near them. Even though it was so much larger, this time, he felt the tug of magic as it transformed into a beautiful trunk with golden handles and jeweled locks.

“Woah,” James said, with satisfactory awe. “How did you…”

Loki grinned. No one in Asgard had ever reacted this gratifyingly to his displays. Even Thor had quickly learned to shrug off ‘Loki’s silly tricks.’

He changed the trunk back, this time with eyes open to fully enjoy James’s reaction.

“Magic. As I have been trying to tell you. Now do you believe me?”

James nodded, too amazed to speak.

“Finally,” Loki said. “Can we play now? I want to see more of this city of yours, even though it is ugly.”

James shook his head. “Can’t.”

“What’s the matter _now_?”

“I’m in trouble. Got into a fight the other day. Ma says I’m grounded for three weeks.”

“Is that why your eye is bruised?” Loki asked. He’d been wondering, but there had been more pressing topics to cover first.

“Yeah. Friend of mine got into the fight first, actually. I had to pull him out of it. Got this shiner for my trouble.”

“That doesn’t sound very successful.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you saw the other guys. But the most important thing is that Steve didn’t get hurt at all.”

Loki hadn’t thought of this, the possibility of James having made new friends, perhaps caring for them more. He knew not who this mystery fight-starter was, but he already loathed him. “This friend of yours sounds detrimental to your continued health. You should drop him.”

“Are you crazy?” Too late, James remembered Loki's aversion to that particular choice of words. “Sorry, sorry, not crazy. But I can’t drop Steve. He’s my best friend. He needs me.”

Loki’s worst fears confirmed. “And what am I?”

James pinched himself and then Loki. “I don’t know. I’m still figuring that out. Anyway, it’s bad timing—”

“Isn’t it always?”

“—because I got chewed out but good about that fight and now Ma says I’m not allowed to do anything after three o’clock that isn’t homework in my room. If I’m not back soon…”

“Then let us go back to your room. That will satisfy at least half of her stipulations.”

“Geez, the words you know. Say, maybe we really should do homework. With you helping me, I bet I’d ace everything.”

They left the quiet corner and reemerged onto the street. Loki was inundated with stimuli all over again. 

“What is that?” he demanded, pointing at a thrillingly fast horseless carriage that was practically overflowing with people. “I want to ride on it!”

“What, the bus? You wanna ride the bus?”

“Very much so.”

James took Loki’s hand to prevent him from walking in front of one of the smaller horseless carriages. “Watch out, will ya? Didn’t anyone ever teach you to look both ways?”

Loki shook himself out of the grasp; he got enough insultingly protective behavior from Thor and did not need it from James, too. “I’ve never needed to be taught. I’ve never walked unaccompanied among the people before.”

James stared at him as though seeing him for the first time. “You really _are_ from somewhere else, aren’t you?”

“I thought I’d finally gotten you to believe me. Must we go through this again?”

“Sure, but it’s still… So what’s the deal? Are you some sort of angel?”

“I don’t know what that is. Angel?” It was strange how the All-Speak failed him with James, both today and the last time. Its entire purpose was to render any word understandable, but much of James’s speech was incomprehensible to him. 

“Guess you’re not. It’s the sort of thing I think you’d know if you were one. Come on, before you get hit by a car and I get in even more trouble.”

After another near altercation with one of the quickly swerving carriages, Loki decided to take James’s silently reoffered hand as they wove their way through the crowds and traffic.

After a few minutes’ walk they arrived at a large building made of countless reddish pieces. Linens swayed from ropes strung between windows overhead. Loki was stunned to see that what he had considered a large dwelling for one family in fact housed upwards of thirty.

The living space allotted to the Barnes family was even smaller than what Loki remembered from Italy. James told him that this was how they did things in the big city. He seemed proud, though, and insisted that he was not nearly as poor as Loki’s pitying eyes and words would have it.

“We’re doing just fine,” he asserted with balled little fists. “I may not be a prince like you, but it’s fine.”

“I believe you, James,” Loki said, trying to smile away the insult he had unwittingly given.

“Call me Bucky. I told you already.”

“But why? Why did you change your name?”

“I didn’t change it. It’s just a nickname.”

Yet another word that Loki did not understand. James had to explain the concept to him. Had to explain that, while he’d never run into trouble in Europe, there were four other boys in his class here named James. To reduce confusion, he’d decided to go by a shortened version of his middle name.

“Makes me more memorable,” he said with a grin. “Steve came up with it. He’s got lots of bright ideas.”

“We don’t have this practice in Asgard,” Loki grumbled, annoyed yet again by the power this phantom other friend exerted. The power to change someone's name was great indeed.

“You don’t have a lot of things in Asgard, it seems.”

“Yes, like buses.” Loki was still enraptured by the idea of the thing. “I do so wish we could have ridden one.”

“Next time. I’ll show you the city. All the neat things we have here that maybe you don’t wherever you come from. It’ll be great. Just not today. I don’t want you to take it the wrong way. I really wanted to be friends the last time. That’s why I was so mad when it seemed like you’d just been lying the whole time. I’m glad you weren’t. I’m real glad it worked out with the magic and everything, but my ma is coming home soon. If she finds you here…”

“All right, all right, I’ll go,” Loki grumbled, but this speech had warmed him, had been exactly he’d wanted to hear. “When will your imprisonment end?”

“Two Saturdays from now. We can spend the whole day together. Hey, I can introduce you to Steve!”

“No!” Loki automatically exclaimed.

“Why not?”

“No one can know about this,” Loki said, casting about in his mind for the kind of practical reason that would best resonate with James. “Given your initial skepticism, I can see that magic is not common in this place. If my presence and travel here were to be known, it may attract more attention than either of us want.”

“I get that, sure. But we can trust Steve. He won’t tell.”

“We can’t let _anyone_ know, or…” Loki did not want to lie, not to James, but he could think of no other way to ensure his undivided attention. Just this once, he promised himself. Just this one time he would lie to his friend. “The magic is unstable, you see. To push it past ourselves might make it crumble. I may never be able to return.”

This seemed to work, because James’s face fell. “Oh. Well, I don’t want that.”

“Then you can never tell. No one. Swear it. Swear like we swore before.”

“Okay.” James clasped Loki’s outstretched hand. “I swear I won’t tell anyone about you, or us, or any of this. I swear by everything.”

“And neither will I. I swear. By everything,” Loki said.

The burning light did not appear, and Loki knew it was not a binding promise like the one they had inadvertently created before, but James was too ignorant of magic to tell. 

“And now it is done,” Loki said. 

“It’s too bad, though,” James said. “I really did want you to meet Steve.”

Loki shrugged. “Two Saturdays from now, you said? What does that mean?”

“Two weeks days from now. Fourteen days. Don’t they teach you the days of the week where you come from?”

“We call them by different names. At any rate, fourteen days from now. We can time it to the hour.” Loki had procured a new watch soon after he’d ‘lost’ the one Bucky still had. He showed Bucky where the hands would be when the proper time arrived.

“You don’t need to show me,” Bucky protested. “I remember from last time. I’ve had it long enough to know how it works.”

“At the appointed hour,” Loki instructed, “hold that watch and wish for me. I will simultaneously do the same.”

“Hope you make it this time.”

“So do I.”

The shadowy portal Loki had come through seemed to have moved, because he now spied it in a corner of the room, as though called by his need to depart.

“Do you see it?” he asked James curiously.

“See what?”

After an explanation and a final farewell, Loki stepped through and back into the cave.

* * *

Over the next few days, Loki practically thrummed with anticipation. For the first time ever, his tutors criticized his performance and chastised him for dreaming through his lessons. Thor thought that Loki had finally realized how dull books and lessons truly were. He took it as invitation to drag Loki to the fencing halls, but that was not it either. The truth was that Loki was so excited that he could barely see straight.

It wasn’t only James that sent thrills through his bones, causing him to sleep poorly at night and dream through his days. It was his grand accomplishment that kept him giddy and distracted. This was magic, real magic, more impressive than anything Frigga had been able to teach him so far. Elemental, original magic, and Loki had accomplished it, before his voice had changed, before any of the signal posts of maturity. If he had mastered something like this at so young an age, what would he be capable of in the future?

He would be the greatest sorcerer in history. 

He was so excited that the trauma of the other place, the horrible place where a man was kept eternally drowning in a tank, surrounded by endless beeps, faded almost out of memory. Loki pushed the occurrence away, willed it into nothing more than a nightmare, lest it drive him mad with terror.

It took everything he had not to tell Thor. For here, finally, was a secret worth telling, something to truly crow about. But if Thor knew, then everyone would know. He knew that if discovered, the adults would try to keep him away. Travel like this was meant to be conducted solely through the Bifrost, under the approval of the All-Father and Heimdall alone. 

The only question that remained was _where_ he had gone. While Italy had had its oddities, the general landscape was not one to raise many questions. It was like many places in Asgard that Loki had seen. However, New York City was something else altogether. Of all the realms where people looked somewhat similar to the Aesir, Loki had heard of nowhere like this. 

He tried asking his tutors, as obliquely as possible, but the answers he received didn’t help. The tutors were dolts. He decided to take another approach. 

“Mother,” he asked. “Will you tell me about the Nine Realms?”

“What do you want to know, my dear?”

“In which realms do the people look like us? Like the Aesir? And what are these places like? What are the largest cities?”

She laughed. “Are you planning an expedition?”

“I merely wish to know more about the realms that the All-Father protects. If I am ever to rule, I ought to know them.”

“Very well. Come, let us go to the library.”

She spun for him fascinating stories, got out her most beautiful books. Loki learned of far corners of Asgard, places he had never heard of before. But given James’s—Bucky’s—ignorance of Asgard, he had to be from somewhere else. There was Vanaheim, where Mother was from, but that was most certainly not it. Little was known of Midgard except that it was a backward, desolate place where the mortals inhabited clay huts, fought one another with sticks and lived their entire lives in less time than it had taken the most recent war to play out. No, that could not be it either. New York had been anything but primitive, and Bucky had remained of an age with Loki. 

He did not ask about the other place, the place with the tank. He hadn't seen enough to know what questions to pose, and anyway, he didn't really want to think about it.

“Are you certain that is all?” he asked when she had gone through every single possible realm, twice.

“Yes,” she replied. “What is it you were hoping for?”

“I do not know.” 

It remained a mystery.

* * *

Loki left early for the cave to ensure he would not be late. At the appointed hour, he was sitting in his now usual spot. Curiously, the marble was glowing. He had noticed it glowing during the journey, but had been too focused on sailing to fuss with it. He wondered if it had done so the last time, but it had been buried in his pocket. 

He thought of Bucky’s face as clearly as he could and rubbed the marble so hard he feared it would melt. The portal appeared immediately. He walked through to find Bucky sitting in his desk chair, absent-mindedly rubbing the watch with large, dreamy eyes.

At the sight of Loki materializing in the room, Bucky’s limbs wheeled in surprise and he fell off the chair. 

“I am certainly mastering this, don’t you think?” Loki said.

“Did you forget something?”

“No, why do you ask?”

“We said two Saturdays from now.”

“It has been fourteen days, as discussed,” Loki replied. 

“No it hasn’t. You’ve only been gone a couple of hours.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Look.” 

They compared their respective Asgardian timepieces. But while Loki’s new watch showed that the agreed-upon amount of time had passed, the days hand on Bucky’s had not moved at all. 

Loki now noticed that Bucky was wearing the same clothes as before. The same assortment of possessions lay strewn around the room, in exactly the same positions as when he'd last been here. The dark bruise around Bucky’s eye had not healed in the slightest.

“How strange,” Loki murmured to himself. “It has been the allotted time for me.”

“I believe you but... I meant it when I told you I can’t play anymore today.”

“I can go again,” Loki said, masking his disappointment. “But how am I to know when to return?”

“Let’s think about this,” Bucky said. “We’ve figured out that it works when we’re both holding the things and we’re both wanting to see each other.”

“Is that what you were doing just now? Is that why it worked?” Loki asked smugly, remembering the dreamy look on Bucky’s face when he’d come in a moment ago. “Were you thinking about how much you longed for my return?”

Bucky groaned and looked at the floor. Loki had only spent a couple of afternoons with this boy, but he already knew him well enough to tell that his suspicions were correct.

“I’ll stay away from the watch for two whole weeks,” Bucky said, ignoring the question. “I’ll keep it here in this drawer and only touch it when it’s time, all right? That way we won’t have any more accidents. If you keep yours on you and test it out every so often, you can come back when I’m ready.”

Loki did not like the idea of being at anyone’s beck and call, but he could see no way around this. However, even beyond that, there were logistical problems with this idea. “I can’t steal away to the caves every day for a trial that may not work.”

“The watched glowed right before you showed up here again just now. I’m betting yours glowed, too.”

Loki nodded. “It glowed during the sail, even before I reached the cave.”

“Probably because I was sitting here for awhile with it,” Bucky said. “So, next time, just wait for the glow alert and then get to the cave as fast as you can. I’ll keep holding mine for as long as it takes for you to get here. Promise. Even if it’s hours and hours. Even if it’s all day.”

Loki was impressed with this display of wit. He had chosen his friend wisely; this boy possessed more intelligence than all of Thor’s friends put together.

“You pretended to know nothing of magic the last time we met, but you clearly understand the theories. How long have you studied?” he asked. “Tell me truly.”

“I don’t know anything about magic, but my Ma taught me common sense.” 

Beyond the closed door, they heard a door unlocking. 

“James, are you here?” a woman’s voice called.

“Yeah, Ma, just in my room!” Bucky jumped up. Hurriedly, he whispered to Loki, “I wish you could stay all day, I really do, but…”

The genuine regret in Bucky’s voice allayed Loki’s lingering feelings of rejection. He knew he would get into trouble if he snuck a stranger into the palace, especially whilst on punishment. So must it be for Bucky. The punishments of princes and paupers were not so different, Loki was learning.

“Oh, all right,” he whispered. “I’ll see you soon. Remember the plan.”

“Got it. See ya, Loki.”

The shadow appeared again in the corner, and in a moment, he was back in the cave.

The sail back to the mainland was cold and windy and unpleasant. Loki hadn’t gotten his bus ride and he hadn’t had any fun. But the journey had come with a little more knowledge, which made it not entirely a waste.

This issue of time was indeed puzzling, but Loki had no doubts that he and Bucky would find a way to meet regularly. 

“You look awfully pleased with yourself,” Sif noted the next afternoon.

“I am, in fact. But I shan’t tell you why.”

“Fine then. Keep your stupid secrets.”

“Oh, I intend to.”


	3. Chapter 3

Loki waited a week.

He waited a month.

He waited a season.

He waited _years_.

He waited so long that checking the marble became an unhealthy habit. It was the first thing he dove for in the morning and the last thing he held at night. He sneaked looks at it during lessons and checked his pockets at mealtimes, to the point where Father assumed he was absconding with dinner rolls back to his room and scolded him in front of the entire court.

He looked at the damn thing so often that it showed up in his dreams, the realest and most familiar sight in the world. He began to dream of it glowing, only to wake and find it cold and dim in his hand. 

At first, those around him remarked on his distraction. ‘Are you unwell?’ was the constant question on everyone’s lips. Tired? Unhappy? He began to laugh inside whenever anyone dared to call him impatient, about anything. Even if he never got back, Loki thought to himself, this torture was teaching him a valuable skill: biding his time.

The wait went on for so long that eventually the constant state of feverish distraction subsided. He went back to living his life, fulfilling his responsibilities. He almost stopped expecting anything to happen, and instead took to checking it as a comforting tic, similar to Thor’s habit of biting his nails.

Part of him feared that Bucky had forgotten, or had purposefully broken their appointment out of residual anger about what had happened in Italy. Loki would have done something like that. Other times, he fretted that he had missed the signal somehow, that it had come while he was asleep. But if so, Bucky would try again, wouldn’t he? He had to, Loki told himself, if only to summon him long enough to set a new time. In yet other moments, Loki feared they had incorrectly guessed about the rules of the magic. What if he was waiting for a signal that would never come? 

One morning, while sitting on the sidelines of one of Thor’s fencing lessons, Loki’s hand crept unconsciously to his pocket, as it often did when he was bored. But this time, unlike the millions of times before, when his fingers lifted the cloth, a light shone out. 

He slipped away, as invisible as a shadow. He had already developed a reputation for sulking in out of the way places. As long as he returned before night, no one would notice his absence.

He almost broke his leg in his haste to reach the marina. Today’s winds were weak, but he was able to conjure a few gusts that carried him to the island in record time, without needing to overexert himself managing the boat. 

He didn’t even bother sitting down this time. He walked out of the cave only two steps after entering it, but this time, instead of Bucky’s room, he found himself in a large, mostly dark hall covered with plush red fabrics—on the walls, on the floor, on the endless seats that surrounded him. At the front of the room was draped a large white curtain.

He was still taking it all in when he felt fingers grab his wrist.

“I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to seeing you pop up like that,” Bucky said, grinning from a nearby seat. His eye had healed and he looked in excellent spirits.

“What happens?” Loki asked. “Is there a noise?”

“Nope. I just blink and there you are.”

They were on an empty balcony, but below them, Loki could see people trickling in to take their seats.

“Have you been waiting long?” Loki asked as he sat down.

“No, you came almost the minute I gave the signal. The ticket guy thought I was crazy getting here so early, but I wanted you to have a chance to get to the cave before people started showing up. It’s a matinee and this picture’s been out for awhile, so I figured it wouldn’t get too crowded, especially not up here. No one to see you appear the way you do.”

Appreciating the cleverness of Bucky’s plan was made difficult by the fact that Loki had no idea what he was talking about. “A picture?” he asked, looking around him. “I don’t see any pictures.”

“It’s more like a play than like a drawing. Do you have plays in Asgard?” Bucky asked curiously. “Actors on a stage and stuff?”

Loki nodded. 

“Well, it’s like that, but better. This whole time, I’ve been thinking: what do you show a kid who’s never seen anything? The movies, of course! I even got us popcorn. It isn’t going to the movies without popcorn. And I thought, if we did this first, we’d only have to pay for one ticket. Smart, right?”

“Yes. Very,” Loki sighed.

He nibbled on one of the fluffy little excrescences from the paper bag Bucky pointed at him. Unlike the dinner he still remembered from Italy, this example of the foodstuffs of this world wasn’t much to his taste. So far, he had to admit to a bit of disappointment. He _hated_ the theatre. Thor did, too. So many long, boring speeches and metaphors, tiresome required calls and responses. Asgardian plays went on for entire days, sometimes more, trapping Loki and Thor in stiff, formal garments and too-hot, silent arenas. He couldn’t understand why Bucky had decided to spend their time together cooped up in this dark, smelly room, watching a play, when they could have been outside exploring this strange new world. By the time it was over, he would have to go home again, if not before.

“So how long was it?” Bucky asked. “I mean, how long did you have to wait?”

“Four years. It was interminable.”

“What? That doesn’t figure. You look just the same.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“I’m pretty sure I’ll be a lot taller when I’m fifteen years old. At least, I hope I will.”

“You’re only eleven years old?” Loki asked.

“Yeah. I thought you were, too. Around that, anyway.”

“I’m a thousand years old.”

Bucky practically dropped the bag of popcorn. “You _are_ an angel!”

“I still don’t understand what that word means.”

Bucky explained. It was a wild story about the religion of this world. Gods and clouds and reanimated corpses—a lot of realms and concepts jumbled into a very dull-sounding incoherence.

However, even though it was nonsense, Loki was quite flattered by Bucky’s assumption. He could tell being confused with an angel was meant as a compliment. However: “No, nothing like that. But I have been told that residents of some of the outer realms look upon us as gods. They’re wrong, of course, but their ignorance cannot be helped. The gods are much more complex than we of Asgard.”

Bucky looked scandalized at that. “There’s only one god! It’s… you’ll go to hell saying stuff like that.”

“You don’t go to Hel for things you _say_ ,” Loki replied.

“But if you aren’t an angel, how are you a thousand years old? _Nobody’s_ a thousand years old. Not since Methuselah.”

“Who?” Loki wondered if perhaps this was another visiting sorcerer.

But no. As Bucky explained, it was someone from the same religious text as the angels.

“Well, I’m out of ideas,” Bucky said next. “I asked my teacher, you know, without saying anything about anything, if she’d ever heard of a place called Asgard. No dice.”

“New York isn’t on any maps we have either. But space is vast. This may be a backwater realm with little contact with the rest of the universe.”

“Space? What, like Martians? Is that what you are? But you aren’t green.”

They didn’t have time to continue, because at that moment, the lights dimmed to darkness. 

“Is it bedtime?” Loki asked. Worse and worse. 

“No, it’s starting!”

A bright light illuminated the white sheet in front of them and foreign music began to play. But it wasn’t just light on the sheet. There were pictures. Moving pictures of people and places, as real as you like, except drained of colour. And they spoke, loud enough to fill the enormous hall.

“What is this?” Loki asked, his voice low and reverent.

“It’s the movies,” Bucky whispered back. “This one’s about New York, so you can see what the city’s like before we go exploring. One of the first movies where the people _talk_. Amazing, isn’t it?”

It hadn’t occurred to Loki that people would not speak in this entertainment, but he was amazed all the same. Moving pictures, larger than life, of a whole new world. There were carriages similar to the ones he’d seen the last time, tall buildings, palatial interiors, and a thrilling plot about theft and crime. Loki could have done without _quite_ so much kissing and tiresome grown-up conversations, but, beyond that, he had never imagined anything so mesmerizing could exist. 

He most definitely was nowhere in the main Nine Realms. His mother would have told him of something this wonderful if she’d ever heard of it, he was certain. 

When the entertainment came to an end, words began to flash across the sheet, and the lights in the room brightened. Loki blinked at the painful return to reality. For a second, he ached at the loss of the world that had immersed him, but then he looked beside him at Bucky. That magical world within a world may have ended, but he was still here. The adventure was still in progress. 

“Did you like it?” Bucky asked with a smug grin. 

“You already know the answer to that. How does it work? What are the principles behind the magic?” Loki hoped that if he could only understand it, perhaps he could replicate it for himself.

“It isn’t magic. It’s… I dunno. It’s complicated.”

Bucky went on to speak of machines and light and strips… It didn’t make much sense, and Loki could tell that Bucky didn’t quite understand it either.

“We can see another one day,” Bucky said once he’d given up trying to describe the process. “Maybe not next time, but soon.”

“There is more?”

“There are a bunch of new ones every week. All different kinds of stories. But come on,” Bucky said before Loki had a chance to wrap his mind around such a delightful prospect. “Time for the next thing!”

They exited the theatre onto an even busier street than the last one Loki had seen. It was as though everything in this world was designed for maximum stimulation. He recognized the architecture of the tall buildings that surrounded him as similar to the ones he’d seen in the film.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Manhattan. Last time we were in Brooklyn, where I live. But it’s all part of New York. I figured we could take the train back. It’s not the bus, like you wanted, but it’s even better, I think. And since we’re starting here, we only need a one-way fare for you, not a round-trip.”

It vaguely struck Loki how concerned Bucky was with saving fares and tickets, but he was too excited to pay it much mind.

They descended along with a multitude of people into a dark, damp, crowded cave, which Loki did _not_ like. He was on the verge of a panic attack as they waited for something to emerge from the pitch-black tunnel.

“What is this? Why have you brought me here? We will be devoured by giant serpents, I know it. Why did I come here? Please let me out,” he mumbled, over and over, wanting to run. 

Bucky gripped his shoulders and promised him with honeyed words and a soothing tone that it would be all right, just give it a minute, you’ll like it, promise. All the while, he maneuvered them as close to the front of the platform as possible. A few minutes later, instead of a monster, a line of buses emerged from the hole, all strung together. They squeezed into the first carriage. A few halts later, the carriage emerged from the hole back into the sunshine and, just like that, the ride was everything Loki had been dreaming of. Yes, he told Bucky, this was a much better idea than the bus, much faster. The train whooshed around corners, thrusting the passengers this way and that. Outside of organized dances, Loki had never seen bodies move in such concert. They plowed towards a bridge with two arches. It may not have been made of rainbows, but in its own way, this bridge was beautiful, too.

Bucky pointed out all sorts of sights of interest as they rode on into Brooklyn, from the colossal statue of a female warrior in the harbor, to the busy seaport, to his favorite candy store. 

“How did you sneak out?” Loki asked during a spell of traffic.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m never allowed out of the palace grounds by myself. Not unless I plan my escape in advance, as I have every time I’ve seen you. How do you manage to roam unsupervised like this?”

“I’m allowed to play around in the neighborhood. No one cares. I’m not supposed to go this far, though. That’s why we’re heading back to Brooklyn so fast. Sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter to me,” Loki said. “So far, all of your ideas have turned out rather well, despite not seeming so at the outset.”

The rest of the afternoon passed just as wondrously. Bucky showed Loki all the best haunts in his neighborhood. Bit by bit, that which had at first seemed unbearably dirty and unpleasant revealed secret treasures: the haunted old house; the friendly mechanic who sometimes let Bucky sit behind the wheels of cars while he worked, and today granted the same privilege to his little friend; the ship loading dock, where vast metal structures loaded crates onto massive boats; the big dog at the fire station that everyone who passed by was allowed to pet; the pastry-maker who always had a cookie to give the only little boy in the neighborhood who spoke French, and an extra one for his ‘out of town friend’.

But the best thing, the most glorious thing, was how Bucky kept glancing at Loki as though he were greater than any of the treasures they encountered. His eyes shone, and every so often—particularly when Loki asked about something very confusing that Bucky found perfectly quotidian—he would mutter under his breath, “I can’t believe it. What are the odds?”

He murmured this yet again during a quiet moment. They’d just finished skipping stones in the Gowanus Canal and were now eating some food that Bucky had packed for their lunch. Sandwiches, they were called. Loki had just finished telling Bucky more about Asgard, his position there, his family, and the Nine Realms. He’d done so on their first day, but not in such great detail, and not with Bucky ready to believe him.

“What are the odds of what?” Loki finally asked.

“Of making friends with a real life magical prince. I’ve never heard of this happening, unless it’s happening all over the place and everyone’s keeping it a secret, too. Do you think that’s what it is?”

This thought hadn’t occurred to Loki. Disliking it immensely, he rejected it out of hand. “No, only very special people can travel between realms. I’d wager I’m the only visitor in this whole world.”

“Well, didn’t I just luck out?”

Loki was exhausted by the time they found themselves back in Bucky’s room. It had been a very full afternoon. He flopped facedown on the scratchy sheets of the bed, not caring how undignified he looked. He felt that he had done more living in this one day than he had in all the years since they’d last seen one another.

“How do you live like this?” he groaned. 

“Like what?” Bucky asked as he rummaged through his drawers, looking for something Loki could not guess and was too tired to ask about. 

“So energetically, so tirelessly. We've done so much today. And everyone we’ve passed has seemed in such a hurry, has seemed equally busy. How do you keep up the pace?”

“I dunno. I usually stick to Brooklyn, but other than that, today wasn’t that different from what Steve and I usually do on a Saturday. Maybe a little bit busier than usual because I wanted to show you stuff, but…” Bucky shrugged.

“You spend your days with your other friends like this?” Loki didn’t know whether or not to be affronted.

“Yeah, on Saturdays, anyway. I gotta go to church on Sundays and school the rest of the days.” Bucky paused. Already, after only a couple of visits, he had begun to have a sense for things he said that Loki might be confused about but too proud to ask clarification on. “You don’t know what church is, do you?”

After a description of something that sounded even more punishingly dull than Asgardian theatre, Loki asked, “So Saturday means the one day when you can do as you like?” 

He was still trying to understand some of the vocabulary here, and had made learning the days of the week one of his goals for this visit.

“Pretty much.” Bucky laughed and handed him a pile of clothes. “Here.”

“What is this?”

“You don’t look _crazy_ or anything, but I caught a few people looking at us funny today. If you’re gonna keep coming here, you should blend in a little more. Put these on before you come.”

“A disguise!” 

The clothes were dingy and itchy and smelled funny, but Loki adored them. The characters in the film they’d watched earlier had worn disguises, and now here he was with a costume all his own. This was real, and more thrilling by the minute. He was so tired; his legs had already given way from too much excitement, and now his head throbbed, too. He nuzzled his nose into the pile of folded clothes and curled up on the bed again, this time using the little bundle as a pillow. 

“You all right to sail back?” Bucky asked after a minute, looking concerned. “You look kind of peaky. The way Steve does when he’s coming down with something.”

Loki felt the same jealousy as the last time rising. This Steve person had come up quite a few times during the course of the day. Bucky couldn’t stop talking about him, even though he didn’t sound all that interesting. Loki reassured himself with the thought that it was _Loki_ Bucky had carved out an entire day of what sounded like a very busy schedule to see, not Steve. He reminded himself that Bucky had demonstrated, to even the most sensitive measures, that _Loki_ was the special person he’d been going quietly mad waiting for. Steve, while he did enjoy the considerable boon of seeing Bucky almost every day, occupied a quotidian, wholly ordinary place in Bucky’s life, one that could not hope to compete with Loki’s.

But it hadn’t occurred to Loki that he and Steve might have anything in common.

“Your other friend gets sick a lot?” he asked.

“Yeah. Real bad. So often that I’ve learned to spot the signs.”

“I get sick a lot, too.” If chronic illness was a quality that endeared people to Bucky, then, for the first time, Loki didn’t mind talking about it, admitting it.

“Yeah, you kind of have that look. Not in a bad way!” Bucky corrected, when he saw Loki’s face begin to transform into a snarl. “It’s just something I noticed. I got worried. What’ve you got? Steve’s got asthma and scoliosis and bad vision and…”

“I don’t know. I’m… It’s a mystery, really. I am easily prone to severe heat stroke, which makes me ill-suited for games much of the time. Food upsets my stomach more frequently than I think is normal. I get very weak. No one knows, but Father doesn’t like the healers clucking over me overmuch. He says the procedures I’d have to endure in order to find it out would be worse than the sick spells. He says perhaps it is tied to my magical powers, that perhaps I’ll outgrow it.”

“That sounds bad,” Bucky said, sympathetic. “Well, if you ever get too tired, just let me know and we’ll take it easy. I don’t mind. I’m used to it, with Steve, you know. Sometimes, we can just play in the park, if you like. It doesn’t have to be a whole tour like today. Speaking of which, when are we gonna get together again? This was fun, but I want to see Asgard.”

“I’ll see what I can arrange.”

They made a plan for Loki to return in another two Saturdays and pick him up for a visit to Asgard. Bucky had many responsibilities for all the days until then. Having seen how busy life was here, Loki understood the need for the delay, though he still resented it. If the math remained constant, he would have to wait four more years. He already ached at the thought.

“This was a good day,” he said politely before stepping through the shadow portal that appeared with their farewells. “Thank you.”

“Any time,” Bucky replied. “See ya, Loki.”

By the time he got to the palace, Loki had expected it to be very late. However, he was surprised to see that it was only about lunchtime. The sun, which had been setting outside Bucky’s window when he’d left, was still hanging high and proud in the sky. He checked his watch and calculated that no time had passed while he’d been away. Only the trip to the island and back.

Odd.

Thor let himself into Loki’s room just as he’d finished tucking the New York clothes under his mattress, where the maids never looked. 

“Where did you run off to earlier?” he asked. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“You have?” This came as a surprise to Loki, who didn’t think his presence had been at all missed.

“Of course I did. It’s a nice day. I wanted to see if you were game to climb up to the towers.”

Loki saw that he’d have to make up a new story. The one he had previously come up with had been to explain an entire day away. He didn’t enjoy lying to Thor, per se; he did love his brother. But he also knew that telling him the truth about this could do no good. And anyway, he told himself, this was the only thing he had that was _his_ and his alone. He had to hold onto it.

“I got bored watching you practice and came up here to read,” he finally said.

“Well, I wish you’d stayed. You and your stupid books.”

“We can climb the towers after lunch, if you like,” Loki said.

Thor grinned. “Good.”

After the day he'd had, and especially after the sail, all Loki wanted was to sleep. He hadn’t expected to have to live through two entire afternoons, back to back, with no nap in between. He wasn’t strong enough for this, but it was the only way to get away with it. And he was hardly going to turn down an opportunity to play with Thor, just the two of them, without his stupid friends.

Next time, he told himself. Next time he’d plan out the time for this eventuality. Sleep extra long beforehand. Anything to make it work.

* * *

Bucky's suspicions that Loki had overexerted himself turned out to be correct. Two mornings after his trip, Loki succumbed to trembling limbs and a fever. He was sentenced to bed until he regained his strength. He didn't mind, however. A few days of illness were a small price to pay for such an adventure. Although perhaps he would take Bucky up on his offer to take things a little slower next time.

Knowing that he most likely had another four year wait ahead of him was enough to help Loki keep from bouncing with anticipation, like the last time. It also gave him that much more time to try to understand what was happening. 

“Mother,” he asked one day. “Why does the All-Speak sometimes fail to translate?”

She wrinkled her brow. “I have never known it to do that. With whom have you been conversing?”

Loki quickly saw that he had made a blunder, and back-tracked. “Oh, _I_ haven’t had this experience. I simply heard one of the visiting diplomats talking about it. About how, um, it sometimes doesn’t work.”

“They must have been drunk or simply ignorant, my darling. If you don’t know what a concept means, then having the All-Speak translate it for you won’t help.”

Loki didn’t like this unknowing suggestion that _he_ was lacking in any way. But he also didn’t think this was the issue at hand. He tried a different angle.

“But what about concepts that exist in one realm but not another? Would it translate those?”

“Yes,” she said, after a spell. “It usually does. The All-Speak is a wonderful thing, that constantly adapts as the languages around the universe evolve and create new words, new concepts. Something that didn’t exist yesterday may have a translation today.”

“I see,” Loki said, though he didn’t, not really.


	4. Chapter 4

With only two weeks to plan, Bucky had picked out a wealth of interesting sights and activities to show off his world. Given that he most likely had four years until their next meeting, Loki felt pressure to surpass his friend’s hospitality.

One night, soon after his day in New York, he snuck into Thor’s room. They did this every so often, when Loki was unwell or when they had secrets to share. Sometimes they snuck into one another’s rooms for no reason at all. Loki liked these nights best.

“What’s your favorite thing about Asgard?” he asked. 

“You, of course,” Thor replied without hesitation. “And mother and Father and my friends.”

“I meant... Something you like to do, or to look at. If you had to leave next week and not come home again for years and years, how would you best like to spend the day?”

“The way I always do, though perhaps without the tutors. Riding, wrestling, a large supper…”

Loki shook his head in the darkness. This wasn’t helpful at all.

“Are you planning to run away?” Thor asked when Loki failed to reply. 

“No, don’t be silly.”

“It isn’t a silly question when you’ve done it before. There was that time you ran away to the Haunted Hills and then played that awful prank on me. Don’t you remember?”

“Ha, yes,” Loki whispered tightly. Meanwhile, he grimaced in the darkness, but told himself that it was just a coincidence. There was no way for Thor to have found him out. He’d been too careful. “You were so gullible.”

“I usually see right through your tricks. I don’t know how I fell for one so obvious. Secret towns. So stupid.”

“You don’t see through them nearly as much as you think you do,” Loki said, sadness creeping into his voice despite himself. Because it was true. It wasn’t often, but Loki could see a pattern forming. Back when they’d only ever played with one another, Thor had been immune to Loki’s tricks. He’d practically co-created some of them. But these days, some of what Loki said seemed to slip past his brother. Some of what he did went unnoticed as Thor’s attention was increasingly split between other people and concerns. 

“Of course, I do,” Thor boasted. Then he yawned, for it was very late, and he’d been on the verge of dozing off when Loki had begun the conversation. “‘Night, Loki.” A second later, he added, “The Bifrost.”

“What about it?”

Thor rolled over, throwing his arm into the other side of the bed and practically thwacking Loki in the nose. “That’s something I’d like to see one last time if I ever had to leave.”

Thor’s idea was a good one, but the more Loki thought about it, the more he realized the very best ideas wouldn’t work. How could he take Bucky to the Bifrost, when Heimdall would be there? How could he take Bucky to any of his favorite haunts in the palace when the entire court was there, not to mention his parents? His presence would elicit too many questions—questions that not even Loki was yet clever or worldly enough to lie his way through. 

No, they would have to do something outside of the palace, in the city, away from watchful eyes.

The only problem was that he didn’t know Asgard the way Bucky knew New York.

He would have to learn.

* * *

Months later, after repeated attempts to listen in on conversations, ask indirect questions or request to be taken on outings failed to result in workable ideas, Loki crept into Thor’s room again.

“Can I trust you?” Loki asked.

“Of course you can. For as long as we live.”

Loki groaned. “I mean, will you do something with me and promise not to tell Mother or Father?”

“It would hardly be the first time.”

“You can’t tell your friends, either.”

To Loki’s ire, Thor hesitated before finally answering, “Yes, but what is this mischief?”

“I want to go into town without anyone finding it out. I want to explore what there is to do there, without the grown-ups hindering us.”

Thor laughed. “Is that all? It needn’t be such a grave secret. I do it all the time.”

_“What?”_

“Yes, with Volstagg and the others.”

Loki couldn’t believe this betrayal. He told Thor _everything_. Well, everything except the one thing that lay behind this request. And the other thing. And, well… He had a lot of secrets, but he hadn’t imagined _Thor_ was keeping any from him. He hadn’t imagined Thor was having adventures without him. “You’ve never told me. You’ve never invited me.”

“You’re too little.”

“I am not.”

“Yes, you are. You aren’t just younger than the rest of us, you’re also smaller than you should be for your age. You’d draw attention. And I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d whine about it, just as you are whining right now.”

“I…” Loki was struck speechless with rage and hurt.

“However, you are my brother and if you want to explore, I shall help you. As long as you promise not to say or do anything that would give us away, we can take you with us next time.”

This wasn’t at all what Loki had hoped for. He’d had the idea that he and Thor could go out, just the two of them, and learn on the same trajectory. Being granted the apparent privilege of tagging along with the group was hardly his idea of a good time. However, he supposed there were benefits. He was less likely to get lost or make a gaffe in the company of people who knew what they were doing. It would be good practice for the real thing. And if Thor and his friends had gone exploring before, they might already know of good spots. 

Not that he envisioned wanting to take _Bucky_ to any of them. Loki couldn’t imagine enjoying anything that, say, Fandral liked. And therefore, he decided, neither could Bucky. People Loki chose to befriend quite obviously shared his tastes.

“Fine,” he finally agreed. “But it had better be soon.”

“Why are you in such a hurry?” Thor asked.

Loki thought of the long wait that stretched ahead of him. He itched to get started, but logically, he knew that he had plenty of time. “I suppose I’m not.”

* * *

By the time the date approached, Loki had crafted a beautiful itinerary to show Bucky the best the capital city had to offer boys like them. While he probably would never have thought of doing it without this motivation, he had enjoyed learning more about the city and about the common folk who inhabited it. This sort of knowledge, he told himself, was what made good kings. He’d heard one of the courtiers complimenting Father on just this sort of understanding before.

The company he’d had to bear on these exploratory excursions, however, had left much to be desired. Thor was different around them, postured more like the big boy he wanted to be, and was more inclined to treat Loki like a silly child than he did when they were alone. 

Wasn’t it just Loki’s luck that he only got to have his own friend once every four years, instead of every day the way Thor did? He tried to comfort himself with the reminder that superior things were always rarer.

As soon as Loki appeared in his bedroom, Bucky put his finger to his lips and jumped up from where he sat to whisper in Loki’s ear.

“Becca and my Ma are still here.”

“Then why did you send for me?” Loki whispered back.

“Thought it took you a couple of hours to sail to the island. Didn’t realize you’d _always_ get here only a second after I gave the signal. They’re headed out soon. Just gotta wait a couple of minutes.”

“Are you talking to yourself in there?” Bucky’s mother called.

Footsteps approached. Loki dove under the bed and Bucky threw himself into his desk chair before the door opened.

“Yeah,” he heard Bucky say. “Just working myself up to do some homework.”

“Such a good boy,” she cooed. “You’ll be here when we get back this evening?”

Loki wished he could see her, see what she looked like, but he couldn’t risk being spotted.

“Should be. If not, I’ll be at Steve’s, or on my way back.”

“Okay, pumpkin.”

Loki heard the smacking sound of a kiss on a forehead, followed by Bucky’s mewl of embarrassment. 

“Aw, Ma!”

“What? There isn’t even anyone here to see! You take your kisses, young man.”

“Bye, twerp!” a girl’s voice, one Loki had not heard before, interjected. This must have been Becca.

“You, too, squirt!”

Loki waited until he heard the front door close and both sets of footsteps silenced before sticking his head out from under the bed.

“All clear,” Bucky said, helping to pull him back to his feet.

“Pumpkin?” Loki only half teased. He had no idea what the word meant.

Bucky flushed pink. “It’s a vegetable.”

“What an odd term of endearment.”

“Shut up,” Bucky mumbled. However, his mortification vanished a second later, and was replaced by giddy joy when Loki pulled clothes out of his bag and handed them to him. “Don’t know how I got through two whole weeks of waiting and not being able to tell anybody. I thought I was gonna _die_. A whole day in a magic country! Am I supposed to be a prince, too?”

“No. I’m still not allowed out of the palace grounds on my own, and I haven’t yet found a way to sneak you in, so we’ll have to settle for exploring the town. We’ll be in disguise as commoners. I stole our clothes from two of the stable boys’ cubby holes.”

Bucky dropped the shirt as though it had burned him. “You stole this?”

“Yes. What of it?”

“That’s terrible!” 

“How else was I supposed to get it?”

“You could’ve bought it, like normal people. Like I bought all our food and stuff last time.”

“But I haven’t any money.”

“I thought you were a prince. Aren’t princes supposed to be rich?”

“Yes, but they don’t allow us to carry currency. Anything we want, we are to ask for, and if it is deemed appropriate, we receive it. But I can’t very well go around asking for peasant clothes.”

“If you don’t have any cash, how are we supposed to do anything today?” Bucky asked slowly, thinking.

“I have very clever fingers.”

“No!” Bucky exclaimed. “I’ll wear these clothes, since they’re already here, but after this, I don’t want you stealing anything for me, okay? Not ever.”

Loki was surprised at this aversion to well-intentioned misbehavior. He’d expected better, or at least braver, from his friend. But he supposed no one was perfect, not even Bucky.

“All right,” he grumbled. “But don’t complain to me when we don’t have as much fun as I’d planned.”

“I won’t. It’ll still be more fun than I’ve ever had, than _anyone’s_ ever had,” Bucky said as he stripped out of his clothes and into the new ones. He struggled a bit with the fastenings of the trousers. “How’s this work?”

Loki instructed and admired from where he sat cross-legged on the bed. Asgardian dress rather suited Bucky, he thought. There was little but his dark hair to distinguish him from any other child in the city, and the fact that, like Loki, he was rather smaller than other Aesir children their age. But Loki had already thought of a way to address their common afflictions. 

“We’re immigrants, in case anyone asks,” he said. “And a bit younger than we are.”

“How come?”

“In case anyone wonders why we don’t fit in.”

Bucky squinted at him. “You don’t fit in?” 

Loki shook his head sadly. “No, all the other Aesir are bigger and blonder. I’m… I’m something of an oddity. I must have gotten my looks from my mother’s side. She’s from Vanaheim, you see. There is more variation in looks there, like there is here. One of Mother’s old friends came to visit once. She looked like us. Pale, you know, with dark hair and light eyes. Everyone thought her terribly plain. I’m sure they think the same of me, but don’t dare say so out loud.”

“Well, _I_ think you look all right.” Bucky smiled a little bashfully, and then quickly looked down to focus on tying his shoes, obscuring his face as he continued, “But we can be from this Vanaheim place if you think it makes more sense. You’re the boss today.”

Loki had rarely heard sweeter words. When they were ready, he took Bucky’s hand and squinted his eyes shut, trying to call the shadowy portal that usually appeared when he was ready to leave. 

It didn’t work.

“Hm,” he said.

“What?”

“Oh, I forgot, you never see it anyway,” Loki replied. “One minute.”

He released Bucky’s hand and tried again. Nothing.

“Perhaps if we give some indication that it’s time to go?” Loki suggested. 

“Okay. See ya, Loki,” Bucky said, as he had at the end of all their previous visits.

The shadow portal appeared. Loki snatched Bucky’s hand again and ran into it.

He found himself in the cave, alone, the hand having evaporated from his grasp.

Panicking, and thinking he’d somehow destroyed Bucky, he reached into his pocket for the marble. It was glowing. Thank goodness. He went back through. Bucky was right where he’d left him.

“What happened?” Bucky asked. 

“I don’t know. Let’s try again.”

They tried again. And again. And again. A hundred different tactics, until their minds had exhausted even the wildest ideas. No matter what they did, the portal would not allow Bucky through.

“I do remember promising to return to you when I created this enchantment back in Italy,” Loki mused when, finally, they’d given up and were sitting on the floor. “Whatever power controls the magic seems to have taken that quite literally. Only I am allowed to travel.” 

“Oh.” 

“Or perhaps,” Loki continued, too lost in rationalizing to fully hear how small Bucky’s voice sounded, “perhaps it only allows he who has cast the spell to go through. I’ve read of some types of magic that cannot be shared.”

“Yeah. Makes sense.”

At this, Loki looked up. Bucky was staring resolutely out the window, facing away from him. He thought he was being discreet in pretending to smooth his hair, but Loki had practiced this trick enough times to know that he was brushing away tears.

“I’m sorry,” Loki said, and actually meant it, which was even more of a rarity than the apology itself. 

Bucky shrugged, but didn’t turn around. “It’s okay.” He didn’t sound like he meant it.

“I’ll see if there is a way to alter the rules,” Loki promised, even though he had already investigated enough to have a sense that this enchantment was the kind of accident that master magicians spent their entire lives trying to produce. “We may not be able to go today, but…”

“I told you,” Bucky interrupted with a quavering voice. He took a couple of very deep breaths and pretended to smooth his hair with extra vigor. “It’s okay. It’s not a big deal.”

“We could explore more of this city,” Loki suggested because he could tell that it _was_. “There was the new toy store you mentioned that was to open soon. We could see what wares they have. We could see another film. Or…”

“We… uh…” Bucky stiffened. He sounded terrified all of a sudden—scared right out of his dejection. “That… I mean... Hey, look! It’s raining. Not much fun we can have in the rain, can we? And didn’t you say you get sick real easily? Don’t want you coming down with something on my watch.”

It was indeed raining, but Loki had a feeling this was merely a diversion. Again, he had employed similar ones, but with a bit more skill than Bucky was using right now. He knew Bucky was disappointed, but why this destroyed _any_ possibility of fun for the day, Loki didn’t know. Unless…

“Do you want me to leave? Have you only suffered my company in hopes of getting a trip to Asgard? And now that I have failed to grant your wish you have no interest in me.”

“Why do you always think stuff like that?” 

“If not that, what?”

“It’s just that… I just need more time, okay? I wasn’t expecting it today. I’m not ready. Can we… are you okay staying here today? Since, since it’s raining, you know?”

“All right.” Loki still did not understand why Bucky was acting like this, but he had no choice but to believe him. It was either that or go home, which he wasn’t ready to do. “What do you propose?”

“I have games we can play. Inside stuff.”

“Very well. Though it _is_ too bad,” Loki complained. “The amount of time I spent constructing that itinerary, and all for nothing. It involved multiple secret trips into town.”

“Tell me about it?” Bucky asked, and this time, his voice wobbled only once. “Maybe… I know I can’t go, but maybe you can tell me about what we would have done? It won’t be nearly as good, but it’s something.”

“I can do that. I like spinning tales.”

“Yeah, I figured that out last time.” Bucky’s face broke into a small smile, the first real one in some minutes. “Hey, can you draw?” 

“No, no that isn’t something I’ve ever been taught to do. Why do you ask?”

“Steve draws, makes everything look like real life. I was just thinking, maybe you could draw what things look like and tell me about it, too. But oh well. Don’t worry about it.”

Loki resolved to learn this drawing skill, preferably one that surpassed it. 

Bucky wanted Loki to concentrate on telling him about Asgard, so they played one of the easy card games Loki remembered from his first visit, back in Italy. 

“Why’re you talking so funny?” Bucky asked a few minutes into Loki’s story about the first time he had snuck into the city with Thor and his friends. He was still sniffling, but with decreasing frequency as he listened to the story.

“Funny how?”

“I don’t know. All stiff, sort of. Even stiffer than you usually talk.”

“I’m telling the tale as one would formally tell a tale at home. Isn’t that what you asked for?”

“Didn’t realize that’s what I was asking for. Didn’t realize there was a whole… _thing_. I’m not complaining, though. Don’t stop.”

Loki frowned, but carried on as requested. 

“You sure you’re not pulling my leg?” Bucky asked awhile later, when they’d gone into the kitchen to get something to drink. “There’s a bridge made out of _rainbows_? That… that sounds like something a girl would make up.”

“You still think I’m lying to you? About any of this?”

“No, not really. It’s just…” Bucky’s face fell again. “Wish I could go.”

“I’ll keep trying,” Loki vowed.

“I know.” Bucky shrugged, clearly not with much faith. “Let me show you what we’ve got for lunch.”

It wasn’t _quite_ as exciting as their last visit had been, but Loki liked it almost as much. It felt like a nice, rainy day with Thor, back when he’d enjoyed Thor’s undivided attention. And there were many new things to discover about this world, even within the walls of Bucky’s apartment. After Loki had talked himself hoarse explaining the Yggdrasil, they listened to something called the radio. Loki was amazed, and then enraptured, when Bucky’s favorite adventure program came on. He even helped Bucky with some of his homework; the strange new approach to math couldn’t have been more confusing, but reading about the history of this land and then answering the questions together proved interesting and informative. 

Bucky tried to teach Loki how to maneuver a cunning contraption called a yo-yo. The sweeping hand motion that made it spin in and out came naturally to Bucky, but Loki almost drove himself into a fit of pique when attempt after attempt failed. Bucky soothed him with ice cream—a cold dessert far better than anything Loki had ever tasted. 

Later, Loki devised a game in which he would transform an object in the room into something else while Bucky’s eyes were closed. The goal was for Bucky to pinpoint the subtle change in their surroundings. A few rounds of this had him smiling again, at least some of his previous disappointment replaced by happy wonder.

Bucky had insisted on wearing the Asgardian garments all day, but when the hour for his family’s return approached, he began to pick disconsolately at the fastenings. With each tie he undid, his face grew sadder and more worried. Loki had never seen such a mood descend upon someone, and could only wait and see what it heralded.

“So, I guess you’ll have to keep visiting here, until you can figure out how to make the magic work both ways, huh?” Bucky finally asked.

Loki gulped, not liking where this was going. “What are you—” 

“Look, I want you to, so don’t go getting any ideas that I don’t,” Bucky said quickly. “Though I can’t do more than every couple of weeks.” 

“Why not?” Loki asked, hurt even in the face of Bucky’s reassurances.

Bucky made the face he made when he was thinking very hard. After a long pause, he hesitantly replied, “Saturday’s the only day I can do something secret all day long. But if I did it every Saturday, people would start to notice. And… um… I know you said no time passes over there while you’re here, but it doesn’t make sense for you to do the boat trip to the island and back for just an hour or two of time here. If you’re gonna come, we should make the most of it.”

“All right,” Loki said, though he could tell that these were not the only reasons. And he could hardly argue. He may have been unable to travel, but Bucky held quite a lot of power in this arrangement. Loki wasn’t able to come unless both of them wanted it simultaneously.

“I had fun today, even though… you know.” Bucky flashed him a sad little half smile.

“Me, too. I always have a nice time here.”

“I’m gonna make sure you always do,” Bucky vowed, just as emphatically as Loki had vowed to keep looking for a way to bring him to Asgard. “I promise. Even if I have to…” He trailed off, looking nervous again.

“Have to what?”

“Nothing.”

They heard footsteps on the landing and a key inserted into the lock. 

“Two Saturdays from now,” Loki whispered quickly, summoning the portal.

“Yep. See ya, Loki,” Bucky whispered back.

Loki jumped through just as the door began to swing open.

* * *

“Loki,” Thor said a few weeks later. “Loki, are you listening?”

“Mmm,” Loki replied, not listening at all.

They were supposed to be studying, but Thor was playing with the yoyo Loki had made for him. Loki still hadn’t mastered it, but after only two days of practice, the motion _of course_ came just as naturally to Thor as it did to Bucky. Loki regretted having made it.

“We’re going to sneak into town later,” Thor said. “Would you like to come with us again?”

“There’s no point anymore,” Loki replied automatically, without looking up from his reading.

“I didn’t realize there had ever _been_ a point, other than a lark.”

“Eh?” Loki looked up, finally coming out of his concentration. “Oh. Oh, I suppose not. But no, thanks.”

Thor peered at him. “What are you up to, brother?”

Thor only ever called him that when he was being imploring, sentimental or accusatory. Loki was in no mood for any of those things. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“You made such a stink about not having been invited, and now you suddenly don’t care any more. You’re up to something. And don’t think I haven’t noticed the spring in your step of recent weeks. It isn’t the first time, either.”

“Oh yes?” Loki asked smoothly. “From whence do you think it comes? What exactly do you think I’m up to?”

“That, I cannot fathom and will not try. But I never thought the day would come when you didn’t want to…”

“When I didn’t want to what?”

“Nothing,” Thor said with a sigh, expertly flicking the yoyo so that it snapped inches in front of Loki’s face. “I’ll see you later.”

He got up to leave. Loki followed with his eyes, mind whirring with connectors. No, there was no longer a point to these excursions, not when Bucky couldn’t get through to reap the benefits. But each visit to New York left him with a thirst to live more fully than people in Asgard did. It astounded him how much Bucky had had to tell him, how much had happened to him in only two weeks, while Loki was left digging into the catalogue of history and lore to keep up his end of the conversation. He felt pressure to fill his time so that he would have something interesting to say on his next trip. Going into town today might yield something. And even if he couldn’t host his friend around town, it was still important to learn about the people he might one day rule. 

And… even without all of this, there was Thor, who had almost, perhaps, for a moment, seemed disappointed.

“Wait!” he cried, shutting his book and running after his brother. “I’ve changed my mind.”

* * *

Loki took his vow seriously. He redoubled his efforts to understand the problem. It wasn’t just the travel that remained a mystery, he reasoned. The mismatched time had to be part of it, too.

“Mother,” he asked one day, “have you ever heard of someone being able to manipulate time?” He faltered, for it was a concept he’d never heard of, nor ever properly imagined. “Someone who managed to stretch and shrink it, like… like the toy I made for Thor.”

“It’s a lovely—though very strange—toy,” she said with a confused frown. “But I don’t know what you mean, dear. I don’t see what that bit of string has to do with time.”

Loki sighed. He had explained it just as badly as he’d feared. “Neither do I.”

“What’s this about time?” a voice said. 

Loki quickly spun around to see that Father had come in. He was leaning against a pillar, watching fondly from behind as Loki assisted his mother with her weaving.

“Loki’s curiosity outstrips my knowledge,” she said with a laugh.

Loki got a new idea. “Father, you know all about all the realms, don’t you?”

“There will always be some outside my reach, even outside Heimdall’s gaze, but I try to watch for them all.”

“Is it possible for someone to create one? A brand new realm that no one knows about? Not even you and Heimdall?”

That was his other idea: that he had somehow created a world that day, a play-world designed specifically to provide him with everything he lacked in his real life. This world could have been too new and too small for anyone to have yet noticed. Perhaps it was only tenuously connected to the rest of the universe—to reality itself—its branch on the world tree a mere bud. This might explain why it was so difficult to reach, why it hadn’t yet synched up in time with the rest of the universe, why bringing Bucky to Asgard had proven impossible.

“Why do you ask?” Father asked.

Loki tried to shrug as nonchalantly as Bucky always did. “It would be nice, wouldn’t it? To be able to make your own world, just as you like?”

“There are stories about creating worlds, but they are merely fables for children, Loki, not reality,” Father replied seriously. “You cannot live in a fable. And you should not waste your time hoping for them to come true. Stories, dream worlds… these things can become poisonous if held onto for too long. You can lose yourself in them.”

Loki felt shamed. “Yes, Father.”

“Oh, let him be a child a little longer,” Frigga said with a sigh and a quick kiss to Loki’s forehead. “Time goes by too quickly as it is.”

For Loki, who had to wait four whole years before he could return to the play-world that he refused to give up—no matter what Father said—time moved as slowly as a glacier.

* * *

The years passed—over a year even by Bucky’s counting—and Loki and Bucky settled into a regular, if painfully infrequent, rhythm. Every two Saturdays, or every four years, depending on whose watch you looked at.

Bucky’s mother often worked on Saturdays, and Becca, who was a couple of years older, was usually out with her own friends. This meant that the two boys had from the moment Bucky finished breakfast to well into the evening to spend together.

They spent the rainy days listening to the radio and playing in the house. Loki was especially taken with Bucky’s chemistry set, which his elderly aunt had bought him as part of some gift-giving winter festival. Loki’s mother had not yet allowed him to begin studying alchemy. But here, in his private play-world, he was mastering the art of mixing compounds that made things go boom in prettily colored flashes of light. 

When it was fine (as it often was, even when it was cold, so much colder than Asgard ever got, which Loki _loved_ ), Bucky usually had something novel planned, whether it was a film or a nice lunch or ferry rides across the river or ice-skating. Once, Bucky even arranged for them to visit a traveling circus. Even though they sat practically in the rafters—which Bucky insisted was better than the front row, though Loki couldn’t see how—it was an experience that left Loki breathless almost until it was time for his next visit. 

Bucky usually steered them to places outside of his own neighborhood, since he continued to believe the lie Loki had told him—the only lie Loki had _ever_ told him—about how these visits would cease if anyone ever found out about their friendship. There was one street Bucky was keen to avoid; Loki suspected that it was the one Steve lived on.

However, no matter how far they ventured, they almost always made their way home to spend the last hour or so in Bucky’s room. Loki would collapse on the bed in exhaustion, and Bucky would sit beside him with his back to the wall, their knees and feet tangled together. There they stayed, chatting lazily, playing cards or working on Bucky’s homework together until they heard the lock of the front door turning, whereupon they would hastily whisper goodbye and Loki would flee.

“Hey, I almost forgot,” Bucky said one day. “I’ve got something for you.”

“A gift?” Loki was surprised. 

“Not really. You have to bring it back next time.”

“Well, that’s rude.”

“I don’t have to lend you anything at all, if you’re gonna be like that.”

“All right, all right,” Loki grumbled, since he was eager to see what Bucky had gotten for him, even temporarily. “What is it?”

Bucky reached for a bag beside his desk and tumbled a large number of books onto the bed. They were all the same size, with a similar design. 

“I checked them out of the library,” Bucky said while Loki fingered each one. “You’re only allowed five at a time, but I figure you’ve got four whole years to get through them. Had to use my card, Steve’s card and my sister’s card to be able to get the whole set at once.”

Loki was barely listening to these workaday logistics. “Why did you want me to read these specifically?”

“They’re about people who get from the U.S. to magical countries. In lots of different ways. There’s one with an underwater cave that reminded me of you. And a bunch where if you hold a magical thing and think of a place or person, it’ll send you there. And a girl who travels by rainbow, which made me think of that bridge of yours. I wondered if maybe you’d heard of some of the names of the places. It’s in the kid’s book section, but…”

“But perhaps the tales are not quite as made up as the author would have you believe?” Loki finished for him.

“Yeah. Something like that. Maybe something like this happened to him, too. Or someone he knew.” Bucky shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s probably a stupid idea. They’re probably just stupid books for kids. But even still, they’re a pretty good read. Steve really likes them, too.”

“Knowing you like them is all the recommendation I need,” Loki replied. Mentions of Steve never failed to make him twitch in annoyance, but Bucky was too enamored of this phantom friend to even notice. “It’s a very clever idea. I’ll bring them back next time. Perhaps… perhaps next time we can go to the library to return them together?”

“I can take them back when I go with my class.”

“But what if I want to go?” It was almost the first time Loki had ever suggested an activity.

“All right. If that’s what you want to do.” Bucky squinted his eyes shut and rubbed at his forehead.

Loki watched him carefully, distracted even from the books on the bed. Bucky had been doing that all day. He looked terribly tired. He’d looked terribly tired for the past many visits, in fact. Loki didn’t know how he had failed to see it before. His skin was pale, there were circles under his eyes, and every so often, his eyes would droop shut, either in pain or fatigue, the way Loki’s did when he was about to be ill.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yeah, just need to sit down for a sec. Steve was sick last week. Might have picked it up from him.”

Loki didn’t believe that. Bucky had looked like this for ages, in a way that predated any stupid illness of stupid Steve’s. But just as Bucky had learned to anticipate his responses, Loki had learned that there was no getting around Bucky when he was trying to brush something off.

They heard the familiar sound of a key in the lock and hurried to pack the books back into the bag. 

“Whatever the matter is, I hope you feel better,” Loki whispered.

“As long as you had fun, I’ll be okay. See ya, Loki.”

* * *

Loki tried to pace himself so that the books would last the entire four years, but putting them down proved difficult, even for his finely honed patience. Eventually, he gave up, feigned illness, and devoured the entire set in a week. He stopped reading only when Thor, Mother or the nurses came in to bring him meals, shoving his current book under the bed at the first sign of visitors.

Loki had become accustomed to the shapes and themes of Asgardian tales, and could usually guess in what direction a story would go. But not here. However, while he enjoyed the books immensely, he felt a bit insulted. He’d spent so much time telling Bucky about Asgard. How could he possibly have thought it was anything like the countries in these books? Books that were quite clearly the ravings of a madman. Lemonade showers and popcorn snow. Talking fowl. Three-course lunches, complete with napkins and utensils, that grew on trees. Boys who found out that they had been enchanted as babes and were actually stolen, hidden princesses. _Honestly._

But madness, like impassioned childhood accidents, Loki was learning, sometimes inspired the greatest accomplishments. This author was most certainly a lunatic, but his understandings of the potential of magic were unparalleled. He subscribed to an entirely different school of thought than that which Loki had been learning, one that threw rules to the wind and imagined greater than any of Nine Realms’ most venerated historical masters. The books fairly burst with interesting ideas for spells and advanced applications that none of the texts he had read had ever hinted at. Loki longed for all of them: enchanted mirrors; powders that bestowed life on inanimate objects; self-writing history books; a new face for every day of the week; magnets that would make the owner beloved of all who met him…

How he longed.

* * *

Loki berated Bucky the entire walk to the library for confusing the Realm Eternal with such (fascinating, inspiring, gripping) rot. 

“Look, pal,” Bucky argued when Loki had finished, “when you’ve never actually _been_ to a magical land, they all sound the same.”

“You quite clearly haven’t been paying enough attention if you can think that.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. He was the only person who had ever dared (and he did it often). He was also the only person Loki would ever have allowed to get away with it.

“If you think _those_ books were crazy, have I got one for you.” But instead of going inside to find this promised text, Bucky kept walking down the street.

Loki hurried after him. “I thought we were going to go in.” 

“We’re going to a different branch. If we’re gonna do this a lot, which I’m guessing we are, we can’t go to the same one I go to with school. Come on.”

* * *

Sitting up late with a fireball suspended over his head (a trick he had finally mastered after many years of practice), Loki only made it thirty pages into Alice’s adventures before he had to put the book down and unscramble his brain. 

Oz had been insane, but this was _nonsense_.

He stayed up all night to finish it.

* * *

“That didn’t even make any sense,” Loki said when he put the book into the slot on his next visit. Collecting, remembering and storing up conversation topics for four whole years was difficult, but he’d slowly grown accustomed to it.

“Told you so,” Bucky replied with a smile. His tiredness had not abated, and hadn’t for so long that Loki was beginning to accept it as part of who he was. At least his affection for Loki didn’t seem at all shaken by it. If anything, he seemed to extract even more satisfaction from Loki’s enjoyment of their days spent together. “At least I didn’t think _that_ place was anything like Asgard.”

“No, I suppose you aren’t entirely hopeless.”

“Hey!”


	5. Chapter 5

Loki and Bucky were trying something new—a special, bonus, non-Saturday iteration of their usual appointments.

New York boasted places of interest too far away or too difficult for unaccompanied boys to reach on their own. Luckily, Bucky had recently come up with the idea of Loki tagging along with his class when they went on a particularly interesting excursion. 

Today, as their first attempt at this plan, they were to tour the Metropolitan Museum. Loki didn’t know where he would pop out, but he had been expecting something more salubrious than a public lavatory stall.

“Eugh,” he sneered, but Bucky, who was pressed up against him in the tiny space between the toilet and the door, clapped his hand over his mouth.

“Oh, shut up, you snob,” he whispered. But he quickly grinned, eyes shining as he pressed something into Loki’s palm. “Hey, by the way.”

“Hey.” Loki had been working on learning some of the ‘lingo’ of this place. He looked down at the blue piece of metal in his hand. “What’s this?”

“It’s like a ticket. You clip it on your shirt.”

“How did you get an extra one?”

“Went to the ticket booth when teach wasn’t looking and said there was one more kid in the bathroom, so could I have an extra one for him, pretty please.”

Loki had seen Bucky’s charm offensive in action many times, and could picture the scene in detail. Bucky was very good at manipulating people when he tried—in a wildly different, though no less effective, way than Loki’s.

“The only problem is lunch,” Bucky said. “They only told us yesterday that they’ve ordered box lunches, and there’s nowhere to buy anything. I don’t know what to do.”

“I wish I’d known,” Loki said. “I could have easily packed something to bring with me.”

“What? How?” Bucky looked startled, as though this was an unheard of idea. “I thought you weren’t allowed to have stuff that people don’t give you, or ask for stuff you need to keep secret or… something. I thought you weren’t allowed to have things the grownups don’t know about.”

“They leave snacks outside my room every day, changing the selection between morning and afternoon.”

“Huh,” Bucky said. 

“Don’t worry,” Loki said. “If I start to feel overly hungry, I can always leave.”

“And sail a boat for two hours, on an empty stomach, all by yourself? No way. And you don’t even look too good.” Bucky’s hand had remained in Loki’s, holding the museum ticket between their entwined fingers. Now, he palmed his way up to Loki’s face again, feeling his neck and forehead. “You’re burning up!”

“It’s nothing,” Loki said. In truth, he’d recently been suffering from a terrible bout of dizzy spells—yet another of his intermittent mystery maladies. 

“You shouldn’t be out when you’re like this.”

“And miss out on this trip? Not on your life. I’m perfectly fine, _mother_.”

“Don’t know what I did wrong to deserve _two_ dramatic, bonehead best friends who refuse to look out for themselves,” Bucky said. 

A loud rap on the door made them both jump.

“Take it outside, kids,” a gruff man’s voice said. “Some of us are actually here to _use_ the john.”

“He’s right,” Bucky said with a warning glance at Loki. “Leave him alone.”

“Oh, all right,” Loki grumbled. He hated being spoken to like that, especially by those he considered beneath him, but the very few spats he and Bucky had ever had had all been over Loki lashing out at officious grownups.

They slunk out of the stall and let the man in. Bucky hesitated by the sinks. 

“If I don’t get to talk to you again…”

Loki nodded. “Saturday. I’ll calculate how long it should be on my end.”

“Yep. See ya, Loki.” Bucky hesitated for a moment, then threw his arms around him for the briefest of hugs, only to immediately become bashful and flee the lavatory before Loki could react.

Loki found that if he loitered between them, each school group’s teachers and students simply assumed he belonged to the other one. This museum was grand for this world, but miniature compared with similarly ornate interiors in Asgard. In lieu of magical artifacts and a universe-spanning root system in the basement, the people of this poor little world treasured clumsy ceramic vases and pictures painted on bits of cloth. The art was unimpressive, but the history lessons were interesting. 

Better were the exhibits _not_ hung up on the walls. Seeing the people whose names peppered Bucky’s anecdotes in the flesh was like seeing storybook characters come to life. The girl with curly red hair had to be Sally Henderson; she had come up increasingly in Bucky’s conversation, though Loki couldn’t understand what made her so special. The woman shepherding them around had to be Miss Devaneaux. She was not long for the school, Bucky had said, judging by the size of the ring that had recently appeared on her finger.

For all the stimulation, however, Loki was terribly lonely. He’d known beforehand that he and Bucky wouldn’t be allowed to speak, or even let on that they knew one another. But he’d been expecting his friend to at least shoot him some private smiles when no one was looking, or share silent jokes spoken in the universal language of eyebrows.

The problem was a blond bit of scrap that clung to Bucky’s side like a parasite, sucking up all his attention. This had to be the infamous Steve. Every time Bucky’s head looked like it was turning to locate Loki, the child would distract him, grab his elbow, tell him some joke. It happened so many times that Loki began to think he was doing it on purpose. Such timing couldn’t be a mere coincidence, could it? From where he lurked at the rear of the group, Loki couldn’t get a good look at him, especially since Steve really _was_ terribly undersized and frail, even more so than he’d pictured. He was also afflicted with the same annoying cough Loki had just gotten over. 

And Bucky was entirely wrapped up in him.

It hurt like rubbing his tongue over a missing tooth, but Loki found himself staring at the backs of their heads more than the exhibits. He wanted to trip Steve, to create an illusion that would confuse him and make him lose the group. But he knew that harming Steve would be the one thing Bucky would never forgive.

If only Bucky would look at him, if only he could tear himself away from Steve for long enough to acknowledge that Loki was even there.

From across the room, he gazed at a statue of a fabled warrior, of the sort to which he and Thor and everyone else in Asgard aspired. The people of this realm were smaller and slighter than the average Aesir, and the whiteness of the marble lacked the golden tan that was considered beautiful at home. Even so, this Perseus exemplified everything Loki wanted to be, but most likely would never attain.

Loki saw Steve stopped in front of the statue, too, looking at it with the same naked longing that Loki felt. The similarity made Loki despise both himself and Steve that much more. A flash of inexplicable, uncontrolled rage welled within him.

The snakes that formed the hair of the Medusa’s head in Perseus's marble hand began to writhe. 

Children screamed. Men ran. Women fainted. The entire hall erupted into chaos. 

“Did you see that?”

“What the hell?”

“I saw it, too! It moved! The statue moved!”

“It’s the end of days, god help us all!”

“Everybody calm down. Just calm down.”

“A trick of the light, nothing more. Just a trick of the light.”

“Some trick.” 

“Well, what else could it have been?”

Steve alone remained calm. His incongruously strong jaw opened a little in surprise, but he continued to stare, unafraid. Loki felt even more annoyed.

Now, in the middle of the pandemonium, finally _now_ , Bucky went on tiptoes and began scanning the room. When he spotted Loki, his mouth was twisted in reproach, not the usual grin that magic elicited from him.

Loki’s dizziness worsened as his mood blackened. Watching Miss Devaneaux distribute lunch boxes only reminded him of his own rumbling stomach. The museum was not very good, he decided. Today was the only truly bad day he’d had in this world. Today was the first time he’d ever wanted to go home before time.

Without bothering to try to get Bucky’s attention to say goodbye, Loki wandered into an empty corner of the Etruscan wing and willed himself back to the cave. Staggering as he was made the sail even more difficult than the morning’s journey had been.

He passed out somewhere halfway along his secret route through the palace garden. One of the tree trimmers must have found him, for he woke in his bed, with his mother sitting, baffled, beside him.

“What were you doing outside?” she asked once he’d had some water. “After I’d expressly forbid you out of your room.”

“I’ve been stuck here for days. Just wanted some fresh air.”

“Fresh air? Behind the shrubbery?”

“Yes,” he hissed, unfairly furious with her, even though she had not caused his unhappiness. “I love the shrubbery. I sit in it often and meditate.” 

She shook her head and picked something up off the table beside his bed. “And what’s this?”

It was a bright blue clip. His museum ticket. 

Seized with a new fear, Loki looked down at himself. He was wearing pajamas. “What have you done with my clothes?”

“What, those rags you were found in? We had them burned. Where did you get such things?”

“I…” He was too terrified to think of a lie. The marble. All he could think of was the marble. Where was it? Had they burned it, too? For all that he’d had such a terrible time, the idea of having lost the key to his play-world forever filled him with dread. What if he could never get back? He should not have gone. If he had stayed in bed until he was well and gone on Saturday, as usual, none of this would have happened. 

“I know what you’ve been doing, Loki,” his mother said.

Loki blanched. “You do?”

“You were trying to sneak into town, the way your brother and his friends do. They think I don’t know, but I’ve been turning a blind eye for some time.”

Loki nodded. He’d been watching them sneak out, too. Something had changed in the long, long while since he’d tried to put together an itinerary for Bucky. Now, all Thor and his friends talked about were girls, girls, boys and girls… in a tiresome fashion that Loki found disgusting. Talk of breasts and backsides and broad shoulders. Wanting to kiss people… and more… Blech. They had stopped inviting Loki with them around the time they’d become interested in all this, once again deeming him too little. But if that’s all they were going to talk about, he’d said, he didn’t care. 

Still, his mother had provided him with a good story to explain his actions, so he took it.

“Yes, that’s what I was doing,” he lied.

“Though why you thought you could blend in with those strange clothes, I haven’t the slightest…”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I won’t do it again.”

“What was it you sought in town?” she asked. “What were you hoping to find?”

Loki had thought many bitter thoughts on his sail back to the mainland. He’d pinpointed what he thought was the source of his unhappiness.

“Other children go to school, do they not? Why not me?”

“Princes need to learn so many different things, my love. And you’ve always been so far ahead of your peers. Why else do you think you have shared tutors with your elder brother all these years?”

“I suppose.” Loki tried again. “But why was I never mixed in with other children my age, even outside of lessons? Why don’t I have friends the way Thor does?”

“Thor’s little group was a happy accident. Children of permanently installed high-ranking ambassadors, the daughter of one of my closest friends… All the children of a rank to play with you two happened to be closer to Thor’s age, even a little older. Is that what this is all about? You hoped to disguise yourself and meet some peasant children your age?”

“In a way,” he confessed, leaving out the part about how he’d been doing it for a couple of centuries.

She smoothed his hair. “I suppose I can’t keep you locked up in here forever. You’re getting a little older now. It’s only natural that you want to explore a bit more on your own. We’ll arrange something, perhaps take an outing into town together. Would you like that?”

He was astounded at his good luck. “Very much.” 

“And I will think about what you said. About finding some children your own age for you to meet. It’s difficult, you see, to find someone of the right rank, and whom you wouldn’t find dull. You are so particular.”

She was being so kind, especially in light of his recent misbehavior, that he didn’t dare argue.

“Please don’t tell Father about me running away.”

“Only if you stay in bed until you get better. Promise me, and I promise I won’t tell your father about this silliness.”

“Yes, mother.” He leaned into the petting. “I promise.”

At the first opportunity, he made his way back to the shrubbery and felt around near where he’d fallen. It took a few minutes of frenzied groping, but he finally felt the little cloth jewel bag that he had been clutching when he fainted. Inside, the marble was safe and unharmed.

He would have to be more careful going forward.

* * *

The one good thing about the wait between visits was that it gave Loki a long, long while to unruffle his feathers. Even a record grudge-holder like himself had a hard time keeping up his anger for years. Loki had largely gotten over his bad visit, but everything that had happened was still fresh in Bucky’s mind and he was desperate to talk about it.

“Okay, fine, it was _sort of_ funny,” Bucky said as Loki changed into a replacement set of clothes. “But what if someone had… I don’t know. What if someone figured out it was you doing it?”

“How would they ever figure that out? Their lack of belief in magic is such that they will always dismiss the evidence of their own eyes. I could have made every statue in that hallway sing and dance and still they would have explained it away.”

Bucky sighed, and Loki noticed, as he had many a time, how exhausted Bucky looked underneath his good cheer. He looked almost as unwell as Loki had felt that day, but refused to speak of it. 

“I’m sorry you had to leave early,” Bucky said. “You missed the mummies, which were pretty neat. But it’s good you went back, if you were that sick. I wish you’d figured out a way to say goodbye, though. I kept looking for you and couldn’t find you. I got really scared. I’ve been scared ever since that something bad happened to you. Steve noticed me wigging out, kept asking me what was wrong. Secrets are one thing, but I hate having to lie to him.”

“You were too busy to notice me saying goodbye.”

“That’s not true and you know it,” Bucky replied. “You just didn’t try.”

It was a crisp, late winter day, Loki’s favorite phase of all this realm’s seasons. His last visit here had been less than fun, but already he could tell that today, everything would be back to normal. 

They were going to his favorite restaurant for lunch. It was more of a fancy, grown-up place than something for the likes of two young boys. But Loki had salivated over someone’s meal through the window one day, and, after some cajoling, Bucky had nervously indulged him with lunch a few visits later. The hostess and waiters at the restaurant had looked at them askance when they’d walked in the first few times, but when Bucky had proven that he really did have the money to pay, they’d accepted their young patrons, and even grown fond of them. 

“Hey, I can’t make our next Saturday,” Bucky as they took their seats. 

“Why not?”

“Oh, calm down,” Bucky said, quick to read the brewing hurt in Loki’s expression. “I just need to move it to the next Saturday. Or maybe do it Friday after school instead. We’d have a lot less time together but…” 

“Do you have a more important engagement?” Far from being back to normal, Loki couldn’t help but think this heralded the beginning of an end. Bucky had never cancelled, not ever. Loki was a creature of habit, and this break ruffled him.

“I’m having a birthday party,” Bucky mumbled, as though he didn’t want to tell.

“A birthday party?”

“Yeah, I’m turning fourteen. I haven’t had a party in ages, ever, really. I said I didn’t care, ‘cause birthday parties are for _girls_ … But my Ma wanted to do it, and my old great-aunt is chipping in and…” Bucky tried and failed to hide his palpable excitement behind a mask of disaffection. “It’s not a big deal, but I can’t really tell them ‘thanks but no thanks, I’m busy’, you know? Not when I can’t tell them why.”

“Who is invited to this party?”

“Relatives, all my friends…”

Loki felt as though he’d been slapped. “I see.”

“So,” Bucky continued, ignorant of the wound he had inflicted, “which one should we do as the make-up? Friday or the Saturday after?”

Loki exhaled a deep breath instead of unleashing the vitriol he wanted. Lightly, he said, “There’s no need to reschedule. I know my way around and I can return home whenever I am ready. The magic requires you to send for me, but I don’t need your company to enjoy myself.”

And yes, that did it, far more effectively than yelling or harsh words. For if there was one thing Bucky Barnes lived for, it was to be needed. 

“Oh. Well, okay,” Bucky mumbled, his face falling. “That, um, that makes sense. Sure.”

They sat staring at one another for a minute until the waiter came to take their orders.

“The usual?” he asked with an amused shake of the head.

“Yes, the T-bone steak, cooked very rare, a pork tenderloin, a side of mashed potatoes, and creamed spinach,” Loki said. “And a banana split for dessert.”

“I’ll have a ham sandwich, thanks,” Bucky said.

“Coming right up, sirs.”

“Hey, you know the food outside your bedroom that you could have brought for lunch this week?” Bucky asked while they waited.

“You mean a year ago?” Loki snapped. He was still hurt about this party, and furious that Bucky didn’t see it. “What of it?”

“Do you think you can bring some next time?”

“Of course. It’s no trouble. But why would you want me to bring lunch from home? The food here is one of the best parts of visiting. It agrees with me better than most of what we have in Asgard. I always feel…” Between gobbles of bread, Loki struggled for the words to express how uniquely satiated he felt after a meal here, especially a large one in this restaurant. “I feel stronger, healthier somehow after coming here.”

“Oh, I mean, gosh, I didn’t realize,” Bucky said quickly, turning red and frowning as he always did when he felt guilty about something. “You don’t have to do it all the time. Just sometimes maybe? I… uh, I wanna know what your stuff tastes like.”

“I’ll pack something for next time. Since I’ll be by myself anyway,” Loki said, looking sadly off into the distance. 

This was getting worse and worse. Not only had Bucky ignored Loki at the museum and refused to count him in an invitation list that included ‘all his friends’, but now he wanted to take away lunch at his favorite restaurant, too. Was he trying to carefully dismantle their relationship, one piece at a time? Was this a hint?

The day passed as it usually did, but was almost as joyless as the museum day. 

“What’s the matter?” Bucky kept asking. 

“Nothing is the matter.”

And later...

“Something’s wrong. I know there is.”

“I tell you there isn’t,” Loki snapped. 

It wasn’t until they were on their way home that Bucky stopped short.

“Wait. Are you mad because you aren’t coming to my party?”

“No.”

Bucky pointed accusingly. “You _are_!”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Look, it isn’t my fault you can’t come.”

“Isn’t it? You said you invited _all_ your friends. Unless I am mistaken about—”

“Oh brother. I didn’t mean it like that and you know it. It’s just… different.”

“I don’t see how.”

“You and me… If I could invite anyone in the whole world, you’d be pretty much the first on the list. But we’re not friends the way normal people are friends. You’ve gotta see that. I mean, no one’s allowed to know about you and it’s _magic_ and you live in some place we still haven’t figured out—”

“No, _this_ is the place we haven’t figured out,” Loki interrupted. “Asgard is clear enough.”

“My Ma asked for a list of all my friends. What was I supposed to say when she asked who Loki was?”

“You could have said I am a friend from Italy who is visiting for a short while. It wouldn’t even be a lie.” 

“Wouldn’t that break the spell and keep you from coming anymore?”

The promise Loki had extracted so long ago as a way to keep Bucky from bringing Steve into their arrangement had created problems of its own. He continued in his desire not to have to share his friend, but only when it suited him. Today it didn’t. 

“I’m sure coming to your party won’t affect the magic,” he said.

“Okay then!” Bucky beamed. “I’ll tell my Ma to expect one more. Just… I just don’t want you to be mad at me.”

“Really? Was that all?” That had been easier than Loki expected.

“Well, yeah. Of course. As long as you’re sure it’ll be all right…” Bucky fingered through his hair and pulled the strands to stand up straight, a little habit he had always had when thinking hard, and which Loki had always found endearing. “Let’s see. I have to help them set up, so I can’t spend the day with you, but—”

“Why don’t you send for me in the morning, as usual? I can sneak down the fire escape and go to the library until it is time, and then make my way back. Where will the party take place?”

“At my grand-aunt’s house.”

“You've pointed it out before. I can find my way to the library, and from there to her house.” Loki couldn’t believe how easily this had been arranged, how quickly some of his discontent had evaporated.

Bucky was still lost in thought, pulling ever harder on his hair. “Make sure you wear one of your own vests or something.”

Loki followed his train of thought and nodded. “I suppose your mother might recognize the clothes she bought you.”

“Yeah. And since you’re supposed to be my foreign friend, people won’t think too much if you dress a little funny.”

“All right.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes. Everything had been very happily resolved, but Loki noticed that Bucky’s face remained crumpled in a thoughtful frown.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I dunno. You and me… and other people. We’ve never done that before, you know?” He sounded terribly unsure and afraid. Almost as if he didn’t want Loki to come. Which he hadn’t, until Loki had all but demanded an invitation. 

“We don’t have to.”

“No, no,” Bucky said. “Let’s do it. You really want to, and I… It’ll be great,” he finished brightly.


	6. Chapter 6

Loki climbed the stoop and rang the doorbell of the small townhouse in Brooklyn Heights where Bucky’s great-aunt lived. From what he had gleaned, she had no children of her own, which left her free to spoil her nephew and niece. Mrs. Barnes, for the most part, didn’t let her, but she must have made an exception for this party.

After a short wait, the door swung open to reveal a woman wearing a heavily starched blue dress and a welcoming red smile.

“Hello, there! Another of James’s friends?”

Loki, who still sometimes called Bucky James in his head, was happy to learn he wasn’t the only one. The face was that of a stranger, but Loki had heard this voice many times. Bucky must have taken after his deceased father, Loki decided, because he looked nothing like his mother. Or perhaps, like himself, he looked like neither parent.

“I’m Luke,” he said, per their pre-arranged story.

“The English boy from Italy! Such a treat that you could make it. Come in, come in. Give me your things. I'll put them with the others'.” 

Loki stepped into the foyer and began shucking out of his heavy winter overcoat. One by one, he handed her the coat, his scarf and hat, and his bag full of library books. “Thank you very much.”

“Funny,” she said, inspecting the garment. “I bought one just like this for James awhile ago. He lost it, of course. How a boy loses clothes the way he does, I don’t know. He’s lost his shirt and pants before, too, multiple times. Though, can you believe, he feels so bad each time that he tries to pay me back? I won’t let him, but he’s a good boy, James is.” Bucky’s mother must have realized she was babbling, and stopped. “Where are your parents, Luke?”

“We’re staying at the Bossert over on Montague,” Loki lied smoothly. “I came on my own, since it’s so close.” 

“Isn’t that nice? Though it’s also too bad. I would have loved to talk to them, and reminisce about the old village. Sometimes I miss it there. So pretty. But run along now. You must want to say hi to James, especially after so long.”

She led him into a handsomely outfitted parlour (handsome for this realm, at least). She deposited his bag on a table with a variety of brightly colored packages before retreating down a long corridor with his coat.

Bucky was surrounded by a large group of boys and girls on the far side of the room. Loki had never seen him look so tidy before. His unruly dark waves had been slicked back and straight with some sort of shiny paste. His unwrinkled shirt was neatly tucked into pleated trousers, and the laces of his freshly shined shoes were actually tied. Loki couldn’t see from this distance, but he guessed he’d even scrubbed behind his ears for once.

He looked handsome and uncomfortable in equal measure.

Bucky froze when he caught sight of Loki, and ceased to attend to whatever was being said to him. He quickly extricated himself from his conversations and hastened towards him.

“How’d it go on your own today?” he asked in a low tone after looking around to see that no one was listening.

“Fine,” Loki said. “Though the librarians were quite fussed not to see us together. We are apparently their favorite patrons. They missed you.”

“Did _you_ miss me?”

“Not especially,” Loki teased. 

Bucky poked Loki with his elbow. “It’s my birthday. You’re supposed to be extra nice to me.”

“And _you’re_ supposed to act like we haven’t seen one another in eons. Instead we look like conspirators. What is customary behavior after a long separation of friends in this realm?”

Without any warning, Bucky threw his arms around Loki. He’d shot up a few inches over the last few visits, and practically suffocated Loki in his gangly embrace.

“What…” Loki asked from somewhere in Bucky’s armpit, “…are you doing?”

“Hug back, you weirdo. This is the ‘customary behavior’.”

Loki maneuvered his arms as much as he could within the tight squeeze to wrap them around Bucky.

(This was actually rather nice, he thought.)

“So good to see you again!” Bucky all but shouted.

“It’s been so long,” Loki replied, in as loud a voice as he could.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Bucky whispered. “That’s you’re here. And everyone can see you. You know, I was halfway to thinking they wouldn’t be able to.”

“I’m secret, not invisible.”

“I meant imaginary.”

“That either.”

“Is this him?” a new voice said.

“Steve, hey,” Bucky said over Loki’s head, trying to sound easy-going but failing utterly.

Loki extricated himself from the hug and found himself face to face with his nemesis. 

“I figured you had to be the kid from Italy. You’re the only person here I’ve never met before.”

Loki smiled wanly. “I’m Luke.”

“Steve. Nice to meet you.”

“James!” Mrs. Barnes called. “Come say hi to your Aunt Linda.”

Bucky looked between them in apprehension, rocking on the balls of his feet. But when his mother called again, he could no longer hesitate. “Be right back,” he said before running off.

“So, you and Bucky have been writing letters all this time?” Steve asked.

“On and off,” Loki replied slowly, trying to think of details to flesh out the sketch of a story he and Bucky had concocted. This would be a test of sorts—putting to use everything he’d learned over years of visits. “It took some doing, but my parents contacted their acquaintances in the US Army and were able to discover Mrs. Barnes's new address.”

“Your folks must be pretty high up if they could pull off a request like that.”

“They are,” Loki coolly replied.

“Have you met any of the others?”

“No, aside from yourself, Mrs. Barnes is the only person I’ve spoken to so far.”

“Come on.” 

Steve introduced Loki to many people he had heard about, many of whose faces he recognized from the museum trip. The boys sized him up and dismissed him as readily as they dismissed Steve. This rankled. The girls showed a little more interest when he opened his mouth and began speaking. Loki had learned that the All-Speak presented itself here with the accent of people from another country, across the sea. Bucky said girls really liked it. Loki didn’t see why and didn’t much care. Anyway, it soon became clear that his ability to contribute to the conversation was lacking, a failing that outweighed the attractions of his voice. The girls soon grew bored of him.

Loki had never been surrounded by so many children his age. This was everything he’d wanted, wasn’t it? It was everything he had been asking his mother to provide. Yet he had never felt like such an outsider. They talked over him, laughed at jokes he didn’t understand, enjoyed a camaraderie that could never include him. The entire point of these visits was to escape this feeling, but right now, Loki felt lonelier than he ever had in Asgard. 

Ignored, he hovered by the snacks table and ended up eating more Jello than was probably polite.

Like Mother and Father at a court function, Bucky’s position as guest of honor made it difficult for any one person to talk to him for long. He kept being called or pulled away. The grown-ups—relatives, Loki guessed—took precedence over friends. Loki didn’t hold it against him this time. He could see Bucky making multiple efforts to come to him, and he shot Loki encouraging glances every chance he got.

Sally Henderson, of the curly red hair, was currently speaking to Bucky and another, older girl whose laugh identified her as his often-heard but never before seen sister Becca. Now that he was watching them interact, Loki saw why Bucky had been mentioning this Sally so often. She simpered so hard in his direction that she could hardly hold her balance. Even worse, Bucky kept glancing at her in an embarrassingly simple way that reminded Loki of Thor and his friends after one of their secret trips to town. When they described the girls and boys they’d spoken to—and more, _eugh_ —they had the same looks on their faces that Bucky did on his right now. Here, Loki had thought himself safe from all that disgusting nonsense. His heart broke to see that the affliction had spread, even to New York, even to Bucky. 

“Hey,” a voice said beside him.

Loki had been so busy staring at Becca and Bucky and Sally that he’d failed to notice Steve sidle up beside him. They were the only two wallflowers in the room, the two outcasts, the two smallest. It was just his luck, Loki thought bitterly, that the one person to whom he was least interested in talking was the only one who seemed interested in talking to _him_. But right now, his animosity towards Steve paled in comparison to the thick, roiling hatred of Sally Henderson that flowed through his veins. While Steve had been a long-time annoyance, rival and uncomfortable mirror, this Sally heralded something much worse.

Steve followed where Loki’s eyes were fixed and nodded sadly. “I guess it had to happen one day, right?”

“What had to happen?”

“Girls… and stuff. But yeah, she’s pretty gone on him. He’s pretty gone on her, too. It makes sense. She’s the prettiest girl in the class. Real nice, too. And Bucky’s the best-looking boy. Or he would be, if he got more rest.”

“So you’ve noticed it, too,” Loki said. Much as he resented Steve, here was a possible opportunity to solve this mystery. “You’ve also noticed that he looks less well than… than when I saw him last.”

Steve nodded and looked at Loki with new interest, as though having found a kindred spirit.

Loki wished he’d stop. 

“So, what’s the story?” Steve asked, a pitifully obvious overture towards deciding if Loki was worthy of confidence. “Bucky didn’t tell me much about you, kept having to run off when I tried to ask. You were in Italy the same time he was and then you and your folks moved back to England?”

“Yes,” Loki replied. “I’m only visiting here for a short while.” 

“What’s it like in England?”

Loki rattled off information he’d gleaned from books and films. He hardly knew fact from fiction, but Steve didn’t know enough to dispute anything he said. 

“It’d be cool if Bucky could go visit you sometime there. He said… he said he really wished he could.”

“Yes, he’s told me the same.” Loki winced, for he could tell that there, Bucky had been telling the absolute truth.

“So, how’d you two meet? If your dads were from different camps, I mean.”

Loki knew Bucky would want him to stick to the truth as much as possible. So, he told a very edited version of the story of their meeting.

As he went on, Steve began to bristle with something like hostility, which didn’t make any sense, because _Loki_ was the only one with reason to feel hostile here.

“So you’re the kid,” Steve spat. “I could’ve sworn he said your name was something else, but my hearing’s not so great. Guess I misheard.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Loki bluffed, fearing that Bucky had broken their pact and told Steve the truth. 

“When he first moved here. When we first made friends, he told me a story about this kid who left him hanging. He was real cut up about it. Fancy accent, fancy clothes, fancy words, fancy toys. But for all his fanciness, he turned out to be a good-for-nothing liar who was just playing him for laughs, and who made him get sick. It was you, wasn’t it?”

It took all of Loki’s willpower not to hex this insolent gnat. Drawing himself to his fullest height he said, “And if it was?”

“What you did… that wasn’t on the level. That wasn’t right.”

“We’ve reconciled, as I’m sure you can see.”

“Buck’s always been real forgiving.”

“But not you?”

“I need to see that the person feels bad. That they’ll do the right thing the next time around.”

Loki found this boy so tiresome. How Bucky suffered him, he wasn’t sure.

“But you went through all that trouble to find him again, so I guess it’s all right,” Steve continued. “You wouldn’t have done that if you were as awful as you seemed, if you didn’t feel bad about it. I’m guessing you had a good explanation.”

“I did.”

“Then I’m glad you patched it up.”

“As am I.”

At this, Steve scooted closer towards Loki and offered him part of his pile of nuts.

“No, thank you,” Loki said, rejecting the peace offering more than the nuts.

“He was really worked up about you coming today, couldn’t sit still about it,” Steve said. “But it sounds like you didn’t get to know each other that well, not if you only met the one time.”

“Well, there were all the letters,” Loki lied.

“Right. That’s true. Just funny how he never mentioned having a pen pal before. He tells me everything.”

Loki stifled a laugh. “Does he?”

“I mean, almost everything. But when he doesn’t… I worry about him sometimes.”

“Why so?”

Steve pulled Loki farther back into the room, away from prying ears. Having decided that Loki was trustworthy after all, he was ready to discuss the issue they’d skirted around at the beginning of their conversation. 

“He disappears sometimes,” Steve began. “On the regular, actually. Every couple of weeks, he’ll be gone for a whole day. Says he has stuff to do, not to tell his Ma. Tells me he can’t talk about it. He says it’s nothing to worry about, but… Things you have to keep secret are never good, my Ma always says. Bucky’s the only kid I know who works two afterschool jobs, but he only tells his Ma about one of them. He’s always scrimping and saving. He works like a dog but never has pocket money to do anything. He works so hard, then comes home to do his chores, and then stays up all night to do his homework. He still spends time with me and everyone, but… It’s too much. And then he does whatever he does when he disappears for the day. He’s been running himself ragged for years. I mean, look at him. You’ve noticed it, too. You said so yourself.”

Loki stared, horrified, at the familiar circles under Bucky’s eyes, the ones that had been there for so long that he'd started to believe they were just part of his looks. He knew, of course, in a way that Steve didn’t, exactly what Bucky was doing every other Saturday. He knew that Bucky told Steve everything except what pertained to his friendship with Loki. If he’d refused to tell Steve the reason he was working like this, it had to be because…

“And my question is,” Steve continued, “what’s he doing with all the cash he’s making? I asked Becca once if times were that hard at home. She looked at me like I’d grown another head. She said, yeah, there’s a Depression and times are hard for everybody, but they’re not doing _that_ bad. Their Ma’s never asked them to help out like that. So if it’s not that, then what is it? If we were grown-ups, I’d say he had some girlfriend with expensive tastes who was bleeding him dry. But we’re just kids, and the only girl he’s got eyes for is Sally. So, that isn’t it. That’s why I’m scared he’s gotten in trouble with something bigger than he can handle. Paying protection money or something. I dunno. He made me swear I wouldn’t follow him and wouldn’t get nosy, so I haven’t. But…” Steve sighed. “I asked him once how long this is gonna go on for, whatever it is. He just said ‘it’s not really up to me’. Doesn’t that sound like bad news to you?”

Loki listened to all this with increasing anguish. He’d noticed, of course, in a vague way, that Bucky had been concerned with fares, tickets, and general money matters, but he’d never paid it much attention. He remembered Mrs. Barnes’s comment about Bucky paying her back for the clothes he’d given Loki. When he’d asked Loki to bring lunch sometime, Bucky had worded the request in a way that made it sound like an interest in the food of Loki’s realm. But now Loki saw clearly that it was because the endless T-bone steaks at Peter Luger’s and the tickets to the top of the Empire State Building and the pleasure cruises around Manhattan and the thousand other little things Bucky had provided with a smile over the years were beyond his means. He’d made his stance on stealing clear early on, and he was proud. Loki hadn’t realized exactly how proud until this moment. 

He’d never thought Bucky had to _work_ for the money they spent—that Loki was costing him so dearly without contributing at all. But he should have. He had always remarked upon how poor everyone here seemed, how small and cheap Bucky’s dwelling was. He should have realized there was a reason there were no unaccompanied children their age at some of the nicer events and places they went to. 

Loki had failed. If he was ever to rule, pre-empting the needs of his subjects would be a paramount skill, one which Loki had already failed to exhibit. His best friend had been struggling to entertain him, and Loki had failed to offer help, had failed to notice anything at all was the matter. 

He felt like such a fool. Embarrassment had always been his least favorite emotion, and right now he was mortified.

Bucky happened to glance over them. He took in the scene of Steve speaking confidentially to Loki, and what must have been Loki’s stricken face. ‘What?’ he mouthed. He was about to walk over to them, but Loki shook his head. He couldn’t talk to Bucky, not right now. He jerked his head towards Steve and forced himself to smile, signaling that he was having a wonderful time getting to know Steve. Sally pulled on his sleeve and forcibly dragged Bucky’s attention away.

Steve noticed this exchange, as well as Loki’s panicked stillness. “Do you know something about this? Did he write and tell you about it?”

“No. No, he said nothing of this to me. But I will fix this. I swear I will fix this.”

Steve looked between Loki’s clenched fist and hot face. His expression softened.

“You really do care about him, don’t you? I can tell you do. Which means you can’t be that bad, really. Sorry I was so hard on you before. I just… I hate when anybody lets him down. And you seemed so…” Steve cleared his throat. “Anyway, I only told you because it seems like you've got some pretty good connections. If something really is wrong, maybe you can help. But no matter what you do, you didn’t hear it from me.”

Loki itched to shrug off Steve’s cloyingly kind approval. He snapped, “Of course I didn’t. You haven’t actually told me anything. Only conjecture. I’m sure… I’m sure there is some other explanation that is entirely beyond your comprehension.”

Steve raised an eyebrow, as though unsure of whether or not Loki had purposefully meant to insult him (he had) or whether it was a confusion caused by Loki’s foreignness. His newfound confidence in Loki’s supposed virtue must have tipped the benefit of doubt in his favor, because he didn’t mention it.

“What’d you get him?” Steve asked next.

“Excuse me?”

Steve pointed at the table of packages upon which Mrs. Barnes had placed Loki’s bag. “For a birthday present. Me, I got him a book of Cole Porter songs, so he can play and sing, you know? Come on, I promise I won’t tell. What’d you get him?”

“I… I cannot say,” Loki stammered. He saw how it was in an instant. This was a tradition of which he had been ignorant. Bucky’s mother had assumed the bag he’d arrived with contained one of these presents.

“I’ll bet it’s something really good that’ll put the rest of us to shame, ‘specially if you’ve got such bigwig parents.”

Loki wanted the floor to swallow him. Steve was more right than he knew. Loki’s parents _were_ important and wealthy. Yet he had beggared his friend for years, and never noticed. He, a prince in a room full of paupers, was the only one who had arrived empty handed. 

What a terrible, offensive joke it would seem when they began to go through the presents only to find a stack of borrowed library books. An insult to all the injury Loki’s friendship had already inflicted. He needed to retrieve the bag and get out of here. As he had after the museum day, he told himself that it would have been better if he had never come. The beauty of all his visits here had been tarnished.

He asked where the toilets could be found. Steve pointed to the same corridor where Bucky’s mother had disappeared with his coat. He walked slowly, waiting for a moment when everyone—especially Steve and Bucky—was too busy talking to notice him. He passed the gift table along the way and snatched his bag off the top. After poking his head into various doors along the corridor, he found the room with the coats and pulled his out of the pile. He willed the shadow portal to appear and stepped through.

* * *

“Look who decided to grace us with his presence,” Fandral said when Loki entered the breakfast room, many days later.

“It’s good to see you finally leave your rooms, brother,” Thor said, reaching over from where he sat to caress the back of Loki’s neck. Looking up at him with concern, he asked, “Have you finished brooding?”

Loki had instinctively let himself be pulled in by his brother’s warm, comforting hand, but at the question, he wriggled out of the grip. “I was not brooding.”

“You’re always brooding,” Sif said.

The thing was, Sif was correct; he had been brooding.

Steve’s words haunted him. They ricocheted through his dreams and echoed in the silence of the room he’d locked himself in ever since returning. _It isn’t really up to me,_ Bucky had apparently said when asked how long he intended for these visits—for the privation Loki had been inflicting upon his life—to continue. 

Perhaps Loki was as poisonous as everyone whispered he was. Dark and marked for evil, sowing discontent and maledictions wherever he went. His friendship had taken a happy, healthy boy and turned him into an overworked drone. 

For lack of any other opportunity for action, Loki focused on thinking of a present. He needed to come up with something wonderful that would make up for… for everything. He’d locked the door to his rooms with bolts and with magic as soon as he’d returned, but had nothing to show for his days of meditation. His mortification was so overwhelming that his mind drew only blanks. 

It was most likely a terrible idea, but he’d finally decided to canvass for inspiration. It had worked when he’d wanted to create an itinerary so long ago. This was the only reason he had come out this morning.

“If someone were to get you a present, what would you like?” he asked the group. “If you could have anything.” 

“A bigger sword,” Volstagg immediately said. And then added with a lascivious wink, “Both kinds, eh?”

Loki repressed a groan. “What if there wasn’t much call for that sort of a thing? Either one, I mean. What if you weren’t much of a fighter? Or a… a lover.” 

“What, like you? I wouldn’t know in that case. What would you want?”

“If it were for myself, I wouldn’t waste my breath asking you.”

“I’d like lessons with the riding master from Alfheim,” Hogun said. “That man has a way with horses the like I’ve never seen.”

Lessons… not an object… It was an interesting proposition, but Loki wouldn’t let Hogun have the satisfaction of having answered well. “You want to have a way with horses?”

“That’ll teach me to ever converse with a child like you.”

Loki had slipped into his habit of denigrating everything they said, and opened his mouth to make another cutting reply, but… 

“Why don’t you magic something?” Sif suggested. “Put your tricks to some use, for once. Make a wish come true, something from their heart of hearts.”

Now here was a notion.

“What do you wish for?” he asked, quite genuinely, and without a hint of malice. He was merely looking for ideas. “In your heart of hearts.” 

“I do not owe you my secrets, Loki,” she said haughtily, which made him feel as though he might as well have lashed out.

“Who is this person?” Thor asked. “Whom do you favor enough to gift something? Tell me her name. Or is it a him?”

“It is probably Surita, the maid,” Fandral said. “She fills his pitcher every morning.”

“How do you know her name?” Loki couldn’t help but ask. “Not even I knew it, and she’s _my_ maid.”

Fandral winked. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” 

They all sniggered. Even Sif.

Everyone was so disgusting.

“Stop it, all of you,” Thor said. “You know Loki is too young for that sort of talk.”

Thor meant well, but this only annoyed Loki more. 

“I am not. I simply don’t like it, is all. There’s a difference.”

“But do tell me, brother, who is this person you wish to impress? Is it someone I know? Is it someone in town? From the outings you have been taking with Mother? I thought you were yet too young. You have always seemed to hate such talk. But if your heart already longs for someone...”

“No no no,” Loki emphatically replied. “I’m not looking to impress anyone. It isn’t like that. And it isn’t anyone you know. It isn’t anyone at all.”

“Is it a ‘lowdown hoochie coocher’?” Volstagg said with a waggle of his eyebrows.

Loki froze. “What?”

“A hoochie coocher?” Sif asked, laughing. “What in the Nine Realms is that?”

“You all know how he says the strangest phrases sometimes,” Volstagg explained, addressing the group and talking about Loki as if he wasn’t there. “He was muttering to himself the other day, in this awful tune. At first I thought he was saying a spell, trying to hex me, but then I realized he was _singing_. Nonsense about someone named ‘Minnie’. Hideous.”

“Singing? Is that what it’s supposed to be? I caught him at it one day, too, muttering to himself,” Fandral said. “Just like you, I thought he was trying to hex me. I’d never heard a more unpleasant melody or such terrifying words. They stayed with me. ‘Puttin on the Ritz’.” He shivered. “Some evil magic language he’s learned from books, I’m sure.”

Loki bit his lips and almost choked on his laughter. Norns, they were stupid. But it was sad, too. Even when he was just humming to himself, people accused him of ill intentions. There was little incentive _not_ to go about hexing people, if he was to be accused of it anyway.

“If you want to impress someone, Loki,” Hogun said, more kindly than the others, “you’d do better to let your hair grow out like everyone else your age. Only small children wear it short like that. You don’t fit in at all.”

“What if I’m not trying to fit in with _you_?” Loki asked.

“Leave him be,” Thor finally said, “lest we drive him back into seclusion.”

“Too late.” Loki got up, taking the plate he had piled high with fruit with him. 

The last thing he heard as he stormed out was Sif whispering, “What did I say? Always brooding.”

Much as he hated them right now, Thor’s friends’ ideas hadn’t been bad, but they were only broad directions, not real solutions. What lessons could he teach that would be at all relevant to Bucky’s life? He couldn’t give him anything that was obviously from another world; Bucky would have to hide it in his drawer, which Loki instinctively felt to be a shame. But what else was there? For all the afternoons he’d spent in New York, Loki didn’t know what secret or not-secret wishes Bucky harbored. And even if he did, his knowledge did not yet allow him to create more than illusions. Bucky deserved something tangible, with real permanence. 

All he could think of was the one thing Bucky had ever asked of him, which was also the one thing Loki remained wholly unable to provide: a trip to Asgard. 

Bucky’s pride may have driven him into a silently suffering decline, but Loki’s pride bested even that. He wouldn’t go back to New York until he had thought of a way to remedy this. He couldn’t. 

His time to think didn’t last much longer. A couple of days later, Father broke all of Loki’s barriers with a single swoop of Gungnir and stormed into his room. 

“I don’t know what has brought on this sulk, but I can’t imagine it is enough to warrant upsetting your brother and your mother as you are. You’ve neglected your studies and your practice outside. Thor never sulked like this at your age, or any age. He has never shirked his responsibilities as you have been of late. Such behavior is indolent and self-indulgent, and is beneath you.”

Loki scrambled out of his high window seat and to the floor.

“I’m sorry, Father.”

“What is the cause of all this? I can see absolutely nothing that has happened recently to occasion such a display.”

“I… I don’t know, Father. There’s no reason, really.”

“Which makes your behavior all the more disappointing. It’s time you outgrew these childish episodes.”

“Yes, Father.”

As they walked together, Loki thought perhaps Father had been right, so long ago, without fully knowing what he’d been saying. Playworlds were for children, and no matter how much growing up frightened him, Loki couldn’t hide from the future forever. It would come, no matter what.

Thinking of Sally Henderson, Loki wondered if, for Bucky, it was already here.

* * *

The years passed, but Loki had made little progress on an idea. It had to be _perfect_ , but such a goal left him paralyzed. For what was good enough to wipe out a debt built up over years?

When the next Saturday arrived, he stood in his room with his New York clothes in one hand and the glowing marble in the other. He rocked from foot to foot, trying to decide what to do. He had never missed a call before but…

He put everything away and climbed into the window seat.


	7. Chapter 7

Loki had thought that with each appointment he skipped, the ache would lesson. However, he found the opposite to be the case. His life contained little in the way of incident. Without his visits to New York to create signposts and anticipation, he felt the monotonous drag of life in Asgard in a way he never had before.

After six skipped meetings, the inevitable happened: the marble didn’t glow on the appointed day. 

Bucky had given up on him.

Loki had been so quietly sad for so many years now; no one noticed the further dejection of his spirits.

* * *

Of course, it was shortly after this that his studies in magic covered a new topic, one for which Loki immediately saw useful applications. Here, finally, was a solution to all his problems. It wasn’t a present, but it would allow him to one day procure one. More importantly, it would help with the other half of the shame that kept him away. 

He hoped it wasn’t too late. He hoped Bucky might sometimes look at the watch, even if he’d given up on Loki’s regular Saturday appearances.

It took years of trying every single time he could conceivably steal away for a few hours. He checked the marble as obsessively as he had during that first wait. Eventually, he got a signal. Unfortunately, it was on a day when Loki couldn’t get away. He didn’t know what to do. He rubbed at it again, hoping Bucky would understand the reassurance despite his continued absence. 

They missed one another for another few months, during which time the marble would glow when Loki was in bed or at lessons. He assumed his calls came while Bucky was similarly busy or asleep.

One afternoon, when he and Thor were delivering alms to the poor, everything aligned. He’d have to wait a few hours until they were finished, but it might work, he thought. However, there was no time to return to the palace to get his New York clothes, not if he wanted to make it to the island and back before sunset. He decided it didn’t matter, not today.

When he stepped through the portal, he found himself under the bridge at the Gowanus Canal. Bucky’s wide mouth was set in a frown. His entire stance radiated anger and hurt.

“What the hell, Loki.”

Loki drew himself up to his full height, which was still shorter than Bucky. Answering the coming question, he said, “It was the magnanimous thing to do.”

“Using words you know I don’t understand just makes it worse.”

“I didn’t bring a birthday present,” Loki explained. But once the words were out, he heard how silly they sounded. He had to stand behind them, though; he hated looking weak or indecisive.

“Leaving me to come up with an explanation for why you left like that, and how you did it without anyone seeing you go out the door, is a hell of a lot worse than not bringing me a present. My Ma thinks you’re the rudest little snot she’s ever met. Steve, too. Says he was halfway to coming around on you, but never mind. They figure you realized you were too good for people like us. That’s sure what it looked like, even to me.”

“No, it was because you were making yourself sick for me,” Loki said next.

“Steve shouldn’t have told you any of that. It was none of his business.”

“But it is mine. Why did you never say anything?” Loki asked.

Bucky shrugged.

“That isn’t an answer,” Loki said. 

“I didn’t want you to ditch me,” Bucky mumbled. “And guess what? You did anyway.”

“But why would you think I would?”

“Oh come on, you’re just slumming it with me. The only reason you’ve stuck with me is because you don’t know any better. I didn’t want you to figure out that you should be friends with somebody else.”

“Who? Who else?”

“You’re a prince. Head of all the realms or something. You… you should be visiting the President’s kids. Or the princess over in England. Doing princely stuff. Doing a lot more exciting stuff than what I can rustle up for us. I know you probably have more fun with your other secret friends. I was just trying to keep up.”

Loki had expected today’s conversation to be difficult, but he hadn’t expected to have absolutely no idea what Bucky was talking about. “What other secret friends?”

“You’ve got to have other people you visit, right? Not in this world, but in other ones. But you can’t tell me about them, because if you did, you’d never be able to get back there. I mean, if it works the same.”

Loki had had no idea that Bucky harbored all of these misconceptions, for all this time. Increasingly, he saw how this lie, this _only_ lie between them, had created deeply rooted problems, unnecessary complications and confusions. Bucky took it so very, very seriously. But it was far too late to confess that he had made up this need for complete secrecy; Bucky would never forgive him.

“No,” Loki asserted, “this is the only place I visit.”

“But you said you don’t have any friends in Asgard.”

“…And?” 

“Well, I can’t be your only friend.”

“Why not?”

“No one can only have friends one day out of every four years. That’d be too sad.”

“You seem intent not only on reminding me of my misfortunes, but rubbing my face in them.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to. I just... I didn’t think it was possible. That’s why I figured you had loads of other people you go see. I mean, it’s only an accident we met in the first place. What did you say? Something about asking the universe to show you somebody sad? The universe rolled the dice on whoever was sad that day, as far as I can tell. I figured you went back and asked the universe to show you all sorts of people, if it was that easy.”

“I haven’t really tried,” Loki admitted.

“Why not? I would’ve.” 

The memory of the man in the tank, which Loki had worked so diligently to repress almost into oblivion, forced a shiver through his entire self. He supposed there must be more terrifying realities in the universe, but he could think of nothing that would ever horrify him—specifically him—more. After that awful encounter, he’d never once thought of letting the higher powers of whatever magic controlled the cave dictate his destination. He’d never tried going anywhere else at all, lest he end up back there.

“It isn’t as easy as you might think to land somewhere pleasant,” he said. “It would be foolish to press my luck, given how well this—you and me—turned out.”

“Really?” Bucky smiled wide. Loki’s few words of reassurance seemed to have broken a dam in him, for words began to rush out, with more naked earnestness than he’d ever before revealed. “I just… I know you don’t get along with most of the people you know at home. And I get it. I mean, you’re plenty moody, and an awful snob, with a chip on your shoulder the size of a truck, and you take everything as some sort of insult, and you lash out at the drop of a hat…”

“What are you—” Loki sputtered. 

“—but I got the hang of you pretty quick. You and me… we get along great. I don’t see how I’m the only person you could ever get along with, not if the universe picked me out of a hat like that. So I figured you had other friends, even if I was your only human one. I didn’t want you to get bored and look for someone new here. So I did whatever I needed to do to keep you happy. And it’s not because of the magic stuff. Even if you were just a regular kid, I’d still be torn up if you ditched me. Hell, I’ve been torn up for months thinking you did. Even if you were just a regular kid, you’d still be my best friend in the whole world, after Steve. I didn’t care how tired I was the rest of the time or how rough it was on me to make it work if it meant I got to see you.”

Loki should have responded to this heartfelt declaration with a statement of his own devotion, should have quieted Bucky’s fears, should have gotten his back up the way he always did when reminded that he counted below Steve in Bucky’s heart, should have lashed out at the previous stream of slights. But all of that faded away. One word in Bucky’s speech—the least relevant in context, but most relevant in their lives—stood out. 

Loki boggled, for Bucky, without meaning to, had just solved the mystery. It occurred to him that he’d never asked. Not directly. He’d never asked exactly what Bucky was. He’d focused on the names of the countries and cities, never asking the name of the world, He had assumed they were all too ignorant to know what or where they were, or that the word would be untranslatable. A part of Loki had continued to think he’d accidentally created this private refuge and its inhabitants; there was no point in asking if they didn’t properly exist. 

He was such a fool. 

“Human?” he asked. “Is that what you are?” 

“Well, yeah,” Bucky replied, startled by the non sequitor. “I thought you knew that.”

“What do you call this place? Larger than New York. Larger, even, than the United States or Europe.”

“Earth, of course. I thought you knew—”

The All-Speak translated it for him. Earth meant… “Midgard?”

“Uh.”

“But how? We had a lord return from a scouting mission only a few years ago. He told Father that the mortals—humans—continued to live in primitive dwellings. He would have noticed the advancements you have here—advancements that outpace even Asgard in some ways. It is for this reason that, from the first, I dismissed Midgard out of hand as a possibility.” 

“Maybe he visited the wrong country? There are loads of places where people still live like that.”

“He said he did a world tour. I have read enough books and watched enough films to know that New York may be spectacular, but there are other large and impressive cities dotted around this planet. One of them should have captured his attention.”

“Maybe’s he’s a lazy good for nothing. Told your dad he did a world tour, but didn’t really.”

“Perhaps,” Loki mused. “Perhaps you are right. That would explain it. But even still, you can’t be human. Humans are insignificant gnats—”

“Hey!”

“—who only live a few years. Yet you and I have kept pace with one another for centuries.”

“I’m not a gnat!” Bucky exclaimed.

“Not you personally.”

“Not any of us!”

Loki saw that he had caused offense, but struggled to address it in a way that would also be true. For that was another part of this startling revelation. He had been taught his whole life how inconsequential this entire race was—as inconsequential as the Frost Giants of Jotunheim were monstrous. This realm was like a child’s terrarium, filled with delicate creatures whose lives whisked by like a passing thought. It was the only realm completely cut off and unknowingly protected by Asgard because its inhabitants had been deemed unable to protect themselves, or even to grasp the enormity of the universe. Loki could not shake a lifetime of teaching in an instant. And yet, it was not just an instant that caused his mind to question the teachings right now. For years, he had come here. In his ignorance of what they were, Loki had come to think of these humans as more. He certainly thought of Bucky as more. 

He could not reconcile it at all.

“Well,” he finally said, very slowly, trying to twist his words into a duality of truths, to get through this conversation now and reflect later. “Most people on every realm are insignificant. It is not unique to your kind, is what I meant.”

“Well, as long as you’re not saying we’re all scum. Anyway,” Bucky said, somewhat mollified, “it hasn’t been centuries. Not for me.”

The answer came to them both at the same time.

“Do you think that’s what the time thing is?” Bucky asked, at the same time that Loki said, “That explains it!”

“The magic has adjusted us to one another, adjusted for the difference in longevity,” Loki mused, nodding in agreement with Bucky’s train of thought. “That is why I have to wait so long between visits. It makes sense now. We may not be the same age but…”

“But we sort of always are,” Bucky finished.

They sat in solemn silence for a few minutes, swinging their legs over the side of the canal embankment, pinky fingers touching where their hands gripped the edge, and thinking about the enormity of what they were wrapped up in. The afternoon wasn’t anything like warm; Loki watched their exhalations float over the dirty water, twisting together in curdling formations.

Bucky’s previous words returned to mind. Learning of how much he meant to him had been a surprise, especially given Loki’s fear that coming adolescence would ruin everything. He realized that reassuring words were probably in order. 

He fought through his natural reticence to say, somewhat awkwardly, “I had no idea you felt that way about me.” 

“Well, I… It’s not a big deal,” Bucky said, looking away. He, too, seemed embarrassed by his earlier confession. 

Loki treasured it all the more.

“I, too, would be inconsolably despondent if you abandoned me,” he said stiffly, equally unused to making such declarations. “I have been so ever since I last saw you.”

“Inconsolably despondent?” Bucky asked.

“Torn up.”

“Oh. Okay. Good to know.” Bucky smiled sheepishly, and then quickly looked away again.

An uncomfortable silence reigned for a few minutes.

“How are things with that girl?” Loki eventually asked, as a generous show of goodwill. He even forced himself to choke out her name. “Sally.”

“What about her?”

“The way you were looking at one another at your party. I assumed… even Steve assumed…”

“Things are good. She, uh.” Bucky blushed. “She lets me kiss her a lot.”

“And you like that?” Loki asked curiously. 

“Well, yeah, sure. It’s the whole point. And she…” Bucky lowered his voice to a thrilled whisper. “She let me feel on her shirt the other day. Not, you know, _under it_ , but still.”

“And what did you find there?” 

Bucky laughed. “Not much, to be honest. But one day there’ll be something. And it’s the fact that she let me that counts. That, and the practice. You gotta practice this stuff. Haven’t you ever…?”

“You know that I haven’t.”

Loki knew that he ought to want to, that he was dreadfully behind somehow. But unlike the growth spurt he longed for, he didn’t see how he was missing out on this. He felt nothing but irritation when he looked upon the passing boys and girls that sometimes distracted Thor and Bucky when Loki was trying to speak with them. 

“Girls are weird, though,” Bucky continued pensively. “Actually, it was almost a good thing you ditched me when you did, just for a little while. Gave me a chance to see how this all works. Girls want you to spend a lot of time with them, buy them things. I’m gonna have to think of how to let her down about Saturday, and on the other Saturdays from now on, since you’re back. You are back, right? You’re not gonna no-show on me again?”

Loki was glad to see that Bucky still automatically prioritized him above Sally. “I’m back.”

They smiled sheepishly at one another again, embarrassment about their earlier sentimentality returning for a moment to mingle with their happiness.

“Say, why’s your hair so long?” Bucky asked, changing the subject.

“This is how it is worn at home, once boys graduate to long pants,” Loki replied, touching his shoulder-length locks. “I usually have it cut just before our meetings, and let it grow out again in between. They don’t like me to do it, so I take the scissors myself and lop it off myself. Once it’s already gone, the barbers _have_ to fix it in whatever way I ask so that it doesn’t look quite so ugly. But as this was a more impromptu visit, so…”

“I get it. You look different like that. More like a kid out of a fairy tale than you usually do. It just hit me harder than usual that you aren’t from here, with you long hair and your Asgard clothes on.” Bucky’s eyes brightened with a new thought. “Hey, now that you know where we are, do you think getting me there might be easier?”

“I don’t know,” Loki said. “I hope so, but I doubt it. I’d guess that it isn’t the distance so much as the time that has proven to be the main obstacle. Whatever we did that day to make all this possible was even more powerful than I ever imagined.”

“Oh well.” Bucky’s eyes fell on the bag Loki had brought; it was much larger than his usual one. “What have you got in there?” 

“I’d almost forgotten. You asked to taste some of the cuisine of Asgard. So, I brought you some.” Loki reached in and began producing container after container of food—everything he had been able to secretly wrap up from the grand luncheon he had all but run from after the almsgiving. He’d told the staff in the kitchens that he was bringing even more to the poor; it hadn’t exactly been a lie. 

Bucky’s mouth watered as he fingered the various fruits and cakes and pieces of cold meat. He listened in rapt attention as Loki explained what each thing was.

“This is the best present ever.” 

This had been meant as lunch, not as a present, but Loki decided to let it stand. He couldn’t believe he had wasted so much time worrying when Bucky was so easily pleased. Bucky had always been easily pleased, he saw now.

“Do you know why I ignored our meetings, even after your party?” he said next.

“Cause you were feeling stupid for not noticing what was going on?” Bucky said with his mouth full and juice dribbling down his chin. “And you hate feeling stupid.”

Loki knew Bucky knew him too well to be able to argue. “Well, other than that. It was because I didn’t want to come back before I’d thought of a way to contribute to our outings going forward.”

“You don’t have to—” 

“It’s a point of pride.”

“Don’t let me get in your way then,” Bucky joked. “You’re a pain in the ass when anything gets in the way of your pride.”

Loki sputtered and clenched his fists and couldn’t even form words. He really didn’t know why he let Bucky get away with such speech, not only at all, but so often.

“‘s true, though,” Bucky continued. “But I don’t mind. Steve’s just the same. I’m used to it. Anyway, what’d you come up with?”

“What day is today?” 

“Tuesday. I’ve been carrying the watch around with me ever since you started trying to contact me again. I have to go soon, but I wanted to see you if I could.”

“Then we’ll have to wait until Saturday to put my plan into action. In the meanwhile, I will require a sample of each unit of your currency. The small silver coin, the large silver coin—I don’t think we need to bother with the medium-sized silver coin—the masonic Washington, the Alexander Hamilton, and the… Oh, what’s his name? The one who refused to let the country schism, killed in a theatre by dissidents, as a lesson to us all.”

Bucky laughed and laughed. “How do you know the people on the bills but not what dollar amount they go with?”

“I like the pictures, and I like the history—I especially like the masons—but, as I think this entire misunderstanding of ours has made clear, I wasn’t paying attention to their function as currency. I dislike having to ask more of you, but if my plan works, this will be the last you will have to spend on me.”

“I don’t have that kind of cash on me right now,” Bucky said, “but I have some at home. Come on. We might just have time to get there before anybody else does. And if not, maybe you could disappear, and then come back a minute later when I’m in my room with the door shut. Just long enough for me to hand it to you.”

“That’s a good plan,” Loki said, admiring how often Bucky came up with them; he really was quite clever, in a common sense way that sometimes complemented Loki’s more complex stratagems. They made a good team, he and his… human (he still needed to reconcile this).

“What do you want the money for, though?” Bucky asked.

“I shan’t tell you. I will leave you in delicious suspense.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Bucky rolled his eyes, but he chuckled. “Glad you’re back, Loki.”

* * *

Loki spent many weeks sequestered in his room, sneaking into his mother’s chambers when she was away, consulting forbidden books. His various attempts over the next couple of years cost him countless sleepless nights, the temporary loss of one of his eyebrows, and, in an unexpectedly curious side effect of failure, the use of his voice for a week. 

But one day, with a messy flash of green and silver, he did it.

* * *

“Anything special you want to do today?” Bucky asked the next time. 

It was, delightfully, as though nothing had happened. They’d fallen into their old rhythm within minutes. Loki had never experienced this with anyone other than Thor, but he’d never been separated from Bucky or had enough of a row with him to realize it before now.

“I’d like to go to Peter Luger’s for some steak, followed by the library, as usual,” he replied. “After that, I have no preference. For decades now, I have dreamed of meat and what the next book in d’Artagnan’s saga might bring. Sometimes at the same time.”

“Sure thing.” Bucky went to his closet to fish out some cash.

“There’s no need for that,” Loki said. “My experiments worked. You no longer have to earn money for our outings, but neither do we need to see our circumstances reduced.”

“So, what’s the plan?”

“Let us go to lunch, and you will see.”

The waiters seemed uncommonly glad to see them. Loki and Bucky didn’t come here every time, but it had been long enough that the staff had apparently begun to worry about their youngest, hungriest patrons. Loki ordered his usual double entrée portion and triple side dish. Here, eating this strange human food, he felt more satisfied and nourished than he had in decades and decades, since he had last shared a meal here with Bucky. 

When it was time to pay the check, Loki reached for the small purse he had brought.

“I enchanted it,” he whispered across the table. “I recently learned the rudiments of duplication. It took some doing, but I have made it so that the units of currency you gave me last time will live in here forever. Whenever I have need of them, I reach inside and say the words, and can then rub off a new one. If I’m reading the bill correctly, we need three of the Hamiltons to pay for this lunch.” Loki muttered the spell, made the practiced motions, and produced the required amount. 

“Woah,” Bucky breathed, as he always did when Loki performed magic.

“I’ll leave this here with you for safekeeping. Only I can work the magic, so it won’t be of any use when I’m not here, but at least we never have to worry about me forgetting it or not having a chance to bring it. And it can only be used in the moment of need, for the amount requested, so unfortunately, we can’t store up money outside of the wallet for your use in the off days. I know there are a lot of limitations, but…”

“Shut it, Loki. I don’t care how many limitations there are. This is… wow. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. People would start asking a lot of questions if I suddenly had loads of cash all the time, or came home with lots of new stuff. So it’s just as well we can only use it when you’re here. Using it just to pay for things like this, when we’re together, is good enough. My Ma gets me what I need. I’m not hankering for anything more than that.”

Ah, Loki thought. There was Bucky’s pride again. He knew better than to say anything about it.

“So you can give notice to your various after-school employers?” Loki asked instead.

Bucky nodded slowly. “I’m gonna keep one of the shifts. She’s no steak-loving space princess or anything, but I have to take Sally out, and buy her chocolate and stuff. But this’ll make things a lot easier on me. Thanks, Loki.”

“After this, I had thought we could procure Dodgers tickets, as a belated birthday gift. Perhaps sit behind home plate, instead of sharing the rafters with the pigeons like the last time.”

From the ridiculous look on Bucky’s face, Loki knew he had hit on exactly the right thing. While he didn’t care for this world’s silly sport—Bucky’s almost unhinged enthusiasm baffled him—or the vulgarity of some of the more rabble-rousing fans, he did like the hot dogs they served at the stadium.

“Hey,” Bucky asked on their way to the library. “Is this duplication spell just for money? Can you duplicate other things?”

“Not yet. But I’m practicing.”

“What about…” Bucky thought hard. “Is there a difference between things and animals? I know you can’t do it now, but one day could you duplicate something alive? Does the same trick do that?”

“No, that requires a different skill entirely, as living beings operate differently from inanimate objects. The closest I could ever get is an illusion. Creating life is a magic untouchable by even the greatest sorcerers. I believe the only way to do it in a real, permanent and tangible way is through, well, birth.”

Loki pulled a face. So did Bucky.

“I do hope one day to accomplish at least the illusions of living things, perhaps even people,” Loki continued, “but it is quite a ways off in my studies.”

“That would be something,” Bucky sighed wonderingly. “Something awfully creepy.”

* * *

Unpleasant as their temporary break had been, the resolution came with an improved status quo that Loki decided had been worth it. 

With the drain on his time, energy and nerves released, Bucky returned to health and high spirits. Free from financial stress, he came up with even more interesting and diverting activities for them. Staying out a bit later became easier, now that they were growing up a little. Over the next long while—about a year for Bucky—they took day cruises to Bear Mountain for the day, ventured to museums to look at old bones, rowed boats in Central Park, visited the more upper class neighborhoods that they had previously been unable to afford. 

Bucky frequently made himself sick on Asgardian pastries that Loki brought for him, and Loki began taking home large amounts of cured meats to tide him over the long break between visits. Bucky taught Loki how to ride a bicycle. Loki taught Bucky rudimentary Elvish and the common Asgardian tongue. Bucky even learned enough to read a children’s book in each language; he’d boasted about his language skills on their very first meeting and Loki learned that he had not been exaggerating, for he picked everything up quickly. 

They continued to return to Bucky’s bedroom at the end of each day. However, unlike in earlier years, when they would collapse together on the bed, feet tangled together, Loki sometimes now sprawled alone and watched as Bucky put on different clothes and slicked back his hair for the dates he increasingly had on Saturday nights. He still resented all this, especially when he remained unable to understand it, but had no choice but to make his peace with it. He still hadn’t been hit with the sorts of urges that he assumed lay behind Bucky’s—and Thor’s and _everybody’s_ —desire for these kinds of encounters. 

Things with Sally only lasted a few months, by Bucky’s counting. She broke it off very abruptly one day, telling him that she had decided to accept the attentions of an older boy who went to private school. Loki’s scheduled visit happened to fall the day after this development. Bucky was very glum, full of doubt and lacking in enthusiasm to do anything. Loki offered to go hex this rival boy, or humiliate Sally in some way, for how dare anyone make Bucky feel this way. But Bucky had said no, it was all right, he’d live, painfully, hopelessly, but didn’t want anyone to get hurt over it.

Such nobility of spirit irked Loki. What was the point, he asked, of having someone like him as a friend if Bucky refused such offers?

Loki had privately felt pleased, especially when Bucky, in the full throes of his heartbreak, had sworn off love forever. He hoped that now the playing field for Bucky’s affection would narrow again, down to just himself and Steve. He was shocked and disappointed when, three visits later, Bucky’s conversation pointedly began containing mentions of a certain Mabel Hawthorne. After a few months of that, she gave way to Ellie Brown, followed by Lucy Baker, followed by…

Loki did find Bucky’s sole focus on girls a little strange. But he never said anything about it; he didn’t much care. And the last thing he wanted to do was have to fight off a whole slew of boys for Bucky’s attention, too.

Steve’s continued existence was bad enough. He’d had rough winters before, but this one was the worst by far. About six times, Loki came all that way only to have Bucky hurriedly apologize for having to cancel because stupid Steve had stupidly gotten sick, _again_. Why it was Bucky’s job to nurse him was beyond Loki, but on this one thing, Bucky would not waver. Bucky always sent him home again, after arranging for a replacement day. Sometimes even the replacement day fell through. His face on these days was so drawn and unhappy that Loki only sometimes unleashed his disappointment on him. Although Loki himself was no stranger to chronic illness, he felt no pity for or kinship with this child. He just wished the little invalid would die already. Delaying the inevitable in this way served no purpose other than to annoy Loki and agitate his friend.

Life at home continued on as it ever had, with Thor now more firmly ensconced in his group of friends. They’d began having adventures—adventures that he was still deemed too little in body, if not quite in age, to accompany them on. Tales of their heroics included the retrieval of an object for Odin’s treasure chamber and the defeat of a dragon. Some of the bards had already begun to write songs about their them, singing of Prince Thor’s exploits with what they dubbed ‘Sif and the Warriors Three’. 

No one sang songs about Loki. Although Thor boasted of his brother’s cleverness to all who would listen, Loki’s part in the one tale he had participated in went unremarked upon in popular tellings. His contribution of magic to their cause was not considered a worthwhile part of the tale.

* * *

“What do you think they want to tell us?” Loki asked.

“I haven’t the first idea,” Thor replied. 

They’d been told to put on their most formal court clothes. Whatever was going on, it was important. The crowd in the throne room parted to let them pass, and two princes made low bows before their parents. Loki noticed that most of those gathered were largely ambassadors, not courtiers from within Asgard.

“Our young princes are no longer children,” Odin said in a loud voice to the gathering. “In preparation for their eventual maturity, I am here today to officially announce the traditional sojourn among the realms.”

Thor looked at Loki, who looked back at him, equally blank.

“They still have much to learn and prepare, so the journey will not begin for some years. We hope that as many realms as possible will extend their welcome to my sons, for as long as they deem it necessary for the heirs of Asgard to learn their customs and appreciate their beauties. This tradition of cultural exchange has, since time immemorial, prepared all rulers of Asgard to care for the realms under his or her watch. I trust that you will relay the message to your home realms so that those responsible can begin to prepare. Our princes will be satisfied with whatever experiences you can provide, and will appreciate whatever hospitality and teachings you choose to give them.”

Mother shot them a glance and jerked her head, signaling that they were to go around and exchange pleasantries with all of the ambassadors. Thor, a blockhead as usual, didn’t understand at all. It was Loki who went around, quickly thinking of something to say to each one. Thor caught on after a few trials, and began to play his part. Soon, at least one of them had thanked each ambassador, and then they were free to retire.

Later, in the queen’s private apartments, Mother and Father talked more openly about the journey.

“There are many places that I have never visited, and which your father has not seen since his own sojourn. This is a great opportunity for Asgard. Your Father and I will journey with you every time you visit a new realm, as a formal ambassadorial visit. He will stay only a short while. I will stay a little longer. But the idea is for both of you to learn about each realm and its people, without us standing in the way. To let the people of each realm teach you what matters most to them, to show you their treasures, to impress you with their worth. In turn, you are to impress them with your own worth. It is your responsibility to improve relations with each realm, to show that Asgard cares about their welfare and respects their culture.”

Loki had been beside himself with joy all day. Finally, here was the opportunity he’d always wanted: a chance to shake off the yoke of Asgard and its people’s limited ability to appreciate a variety of talents. Here was a chance to meet new people, to mingle with socially appropriate youths his age from socially appropriate realms. Here was a chance to make new friends, ones who could appreciate him and whom he would not have to keep secret. He only wished that he was a little bigger, a little more imposing, so that when they arrived in each realm, he could be more easily taken seriously and seen as Thor’s equal in his right to the throne. He supposed he had some time, though, for the growth spurt to arrive. They were not to leave for almost a century. Father wanted everyone to have ample time to prepare.

“Are you pleased, Loki?” Mother asked with a smile. “I told you I have been plotting how to get you out into the world, to meet new people.”

“Yes, thank you, Mother. It sounds like this will last many years, decades,” Loki said. 

“Nay,” Father said. “It will be centuries. Each realm dictates, within reason, how long you will stay. There are many realms, when you include the satellites. You will most likely spend decades in each of the main realms. My own trip lasted over two centuries. Those two centuries entirely away from home and the people I had grown up with made me a much wiser king and a more self-sufficient adult.” 

“What? We are not to return home at all?” Thor asked. “We won’t see our friends for all that time?”

“You will be in Asgard only for as long as it takes for Heimdall to turn the Bifrost and send you to the next place. You will not leave his chamber or stop at the palace. It is part of the tradition for the heirs to learn hardiness, and not rely on returns home for comfort. So, no, you will not return to Asgard properly until it is over.”

Thor railed vocally about the unfairness of this isolation. Similarly, though internally, Loki was calculating. Centuries away from Asgard—and more importantly, the island cave—amounted to years on Earth. 

Loki’s excitement for the trip remained undiminished, but Bucky wasn’t going to like this.


	8. Chapter 8

Loki quickly saw that giving the various realms extensive time to prepare for the princes’ formal visit was not the only reason why Father had made the announcement so far in advance. He also meant to give Loki and Thor time to ready themselves. 

A discernible change in their day-to-day life followed the announcement. The tutors placed even greater emphasis on geography, history and ethnography, with the expectation that they would become master diplomats in short order. In addition to the various arts of war, dancing lessons (ugh) covering traditional steps of the major realms were added to their weekly itinerary. Neither boy enjoyed them, but Loki exhibited greater aptitude and grace than Thor did.

Life became so busy that Loki’s appointed day in New York became less the sole thing to which he had to look forward, and simply yet another event in an increasingly demanding calendar. 

He meant to tell Bucky straightaway, but he popped out near the entrance of the airplane stunt show they had bought tickets to some time ago. Bucky affectionately nudged him in the shoulder, but that was all the interaction they had time for before the dizzying feats commanded their whole attention. Bucky had plans with Steve that night, so they parted ways on the street instead of in private. And so the day passed without Loki ever happening upon the right moment. 

Their next meeting, a special night-time outing to an upscale jazz club that Loki had petitioned hard for and Bucky had planned for ages, was too pleasant to ruin with news that was sure to sadden. They’d bought grown-up formal clothes for the occasion and used magic to unlatch a window and climb inside. The staff could not have believed that baby-faced Bucky and his smaller, spotted friend were old enough to be there, but they were already inside and had the money to pay for their drinks. Loki felt no effects of the liquor, especially after only one (disgusting) drink, but he practically had to carry Bucky home afterwards. Between the music and then Bucky’s semi-conscious state on the subway ride home, Loki never got the chance to say anything.

The next time, Bucky was dejected because he’d seen his latest object of interest holding hands with an older fellow; Loki hardly thought it kind to upset him further. And then the next time, they had to postpone because Steve was sick again.

After so many delays, Loki decided there was no rush.

* * *

“How do you do that?” Bucky asked Loki one rainy morning as they played checkers in his apartment.

“Do what?” 

“That knife-flipping thing.”

Loki looked at his left hand, where the butter knife sat poised between his index and middle finger. As though a spectator to his own actions, he watched himself move the knife around each of his fingers, finishing with an elegant flip and catch. 

The masters had recently given up hope for Loki to excel in the usual fighting skills and had changed tack entirely. While Thor still worked on jousting, boxing, wrestling and swordplay, Loki was given new and different skills to try out. He gravitated to knife work and archery, and discovered that his size and temperament served him well in this arena. He progressed quickly, and only wished the masters had taken this course of action sooner. He practiced fiendishly, twirling knives while he studied for tests on points of etiquette in all the realms.

This knife-flipping trick was a new one that the visiting master from Vanaheim had recently taught him.

“Show me?” Bucky asked.

“Of course.”

Loki reached across the dining table to take Bucky’s hand. He stroked along his palm, easing Bucky’s fingers into just the right position. He tried to guide the knife through Bucky’s fingers, but the angle was all wrong. He walked around the table and pulled the empty chair behind Bucky so close that his chin practically rested on Bucky’s shoulder. 

Bucky stiffened and glanced backwards, between Loki’s face and their joined hands. “What, uh, what are you doing?” he choked.

“Showing you how to do the trick. What?”

“Nothing. Um. Yeah, show me.”

Loki couldn’t understand why Bucky, usually so quick to grasp these kinds of physical skills, became awkward and jittery. His fingers trembled and he dropped the knife multiple times, for no reason.

“What’s the matter with you?” Loki asked. 

“Nothing.” Bucky stood up and crossed to the other side of the room. He took a few deep breaths and, for the first time in many attempts, managed to get it through three fingers before going awry. 

“You almost have it,” Loki said.

“Yeah, I just needed a little space.” Bucky continued to look at the floor, which told Loki something was still wrong, but whatever momentary awkwardness had overtaken him soon dissipated. He flipped it again and managed to spin it in the air—not quite as high as Loki had, nor with as clean of a catch, but a good start. “I bet by the next time you come, I’ll have it down pat.”

* * *

On a late spring day, Bucky asked if Loki would be interested in coming slightly more often, just during summer holidays. 

“School lets out next week. One of my uncles got me a summer job helping out at his law firm in Manhattan,” he explained. “It’s only for the mornings, though. I’m free after lunch for the whole rest of the day, every day.”

“This is hardly our first summer, but you’ve never proposed this before,” Loki chided.

“Yeah, I never thought of it, I guess. And the money stuff… But that’s all fixed now, and…”

Bucky, as Loki had noted many times, possessed a rare intuition, that Loki, for all his considerable cleverness and skill at manipulation, did not. He must have sensed that something had shifted—some new urgency—even though he could not guess at the specifics, and didn’t seem conscious enough of the change to ask.

Curiously, Loki asked, “And what is Steve doing on these afternoons?”

“He’s taking an art course.”

Although it wasn’t the answer Loki wanted to hear, it was the answer he had expected.

“Look, you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Bucky said.

“That isn’t what I was saying.”

Loki’s life had become exponentially busier, but not so busy that he couldn’t spare one day a year. They switched to a temporary schedule of every Monday and Friday. 

One of Bucky’s stated goals for the summer was to progress his study of the common Asgardian tongue, which he’d started a few months before. It took Loki years to replace the French in Bucky’s French-English dictionary with Asgardian, but he finished the project just in time for the beginning of summer. With no exposure except loans from Loki’s personal library and the hour every visit that Loki deigned to practice with him, Bucky soon, and quite impressively, learned enough to graduate to books without pictures. He could hold his own in basic conversations about weather and family.

“I like learning languages,” he said when Loki asked why he bothered. “And you’re gonna get me there one day. I know you won’t give up trying. I want to make sure I’m ready when you finally crack it.”

Loki didn’t have the heart to tell him that he’d put these hopeless attempts on hold. His increased responsibilities left him little time for academic experimentation that, deep down, he knew was doomed to fail.

* * *

With greater frequency, there was less expectation for each visit to be memorable. The area in which Bucky’s uncle’s office was located didn’t boast much in the way of attractions, so Loki always met Bucky further downtown. Together, they spent languorous afternoons and evenings going to pictures and enjoying all that lower Manhattan had to offer. 

They’d always taken the city’s size and anonymity for granted, but someone must have finally remarked upon two adolescent boys going about this neighborhood and spending entirely too much money.

They had just come out of a theatre on the Bowery. One minute, Loki was making Bucky laugh with a story of how he’d tricked Volstagg into kissing a bear cub, and the next, a large man was dragging Bucky into an alley. Two others grabbed Loki roughly and shoved him in, too.

Bucky was in that awkward stage where he was all bony limbs, but he was stronger than he looked. He wriggled out of the man’s grasp and punched him squarely in the nose. 

Unfortunately, these men were stronger still. The man kicked Bucky so hard in the stomach that he careened backwards, hitting his head against the brick wall. The shock of the impact made him crumple to the ground. A second man stepped on his arm hard enough to produce a cracking sound. Bucky’s mouth opened to scream in pain, but a boot to the face muffled the sound.

It all happened so fast. Loki, who had been tripped to the ground, was still getting over the shock that anyone had dared to lay a hand on his person. He stared in horror as the men heaved Bucky to his feet.

“We’ve been watching you two. You’ve been dropping a lot of dough in this neighborhood. Don’t know where a couple of kids like you get it, but we want it.”

“Unhand him,” Loki commanded. “Unhand him and I may yet let you live.”

“Big words from a little snot-nose. Come on, hand over the cash.”

“Get out of here,” Bucky said to Loki. “Go home. I’ll be okay.”

“Your friend isn’t going anywhere. He’s got no way out.”

Bucky laughed through his rapidly swelling lip. “That’s what you think.” Switching to Asgardian, he said, “Go on. Get out of here. Use the portal.”

“Don’t be an ass,” Loki replied, in the same tongue.

“What are you saying?” one of the men asked.

Loki took a step towards them, but the leader pulled a knife and placed it against Bucky’s throat.

“Give us the cash, kid. Just toss it over to my friend here and your buddy doesn’t have to get hurt any more.”

Small though he was, Loki knew he was stronger than any human, but he didn’t dare make a move towards them while they held Bucky like that. 

He threw them purse, knowing it would buy him a moment of opportunity. As expected, the men loosened their hold on Bucky to inspect its contents. 

This was all he needed. 

Fuelled by explosive rage, Loki watched more than willed the power that burst out of him. Tendrils of ice flowed, almost prettily, from his feet across the cement ground and up the ankles of their assailants.

He was even more creative than he gave himself credit for. The ice was quite clever, though not something he would ever have consciously thought to conjure.

“What the…” one of them asked, as ice crept up his legs, paralyzing him. 

“What is this shi—” another asked, but the ice covered his face and prevented any further speech.

“We gotta get out of here, Loki,” Bucky whispered.

He was right. Loki didn’t know what the people of this realm would make of walking by an alley in which sat two roughed-up youths and three burly men encased in ice.

Loki grabbed Bucky by both hands and pulled him into a standing position. He dragged them out of the alley and down the street. Bucky groaned at every step and slowed almost to a stop. Loki could see that they weren’t going to make it much farther. 

“Wait here,” he said, depositing Bucky on a townhouse stoop.

Loki ran up and down the block, peering in windows. He crept through an opening between buildings and double-checked the back windows. Finding a townhouse that was definitely empty, he picked the garden entrance lock and let himself in. He ran through the house and opened the front door to drag Bucky in. He set him up on the parlour sofa before going off to find where these people kept the bandages. 

By the time he returned with supplies, Bucky was barely conscious. The sight only increased Loki’s fear, which manifested as anger.

“You _imbecile!_ ” 

“Huh?”

“Why did you fight back? Why didn’t you leave it to me? They were each of them twice your size!”

“And they were three times yours,” Bucky mumbled. “Can you stop shaking me? It hurts.”

Loki hadn’t realized that he was doing so, and now released him. Still, he couldn’t help but continue to scream. “What were you thinking?”

“I dunno. Wasn’t, really.”

“That much is obvious!”

“I’m… I guess I’m used to jumping in,” Bucky said weakly.

“Yes, but I am no fragile human. I am not Steve!”

Bucky’s only response was a moan. His eyes fluttered shut.

“Bucky?” 

There was no response. Bucky had lost consciousness.

Loki set to work, corralling every healing spell his mother had ever taught him. He could see the white bone sticking out in the places where Bucky’s arm had been broken. The cut was shallow, but blood flowed down into his shirt from where the knife had pressed against his neck. None of Bucky’s injuries were life threatening or even particularly serious, but the idea that they could have been much, much worse was what distressed Loki. 

He sat there, for over an hour, until his arms had tired from making frantic passes over the wounds, and his lips were exhausted from muttering the spells. Slowly, the bones receded back into place and Bucky’s skin began to heal.

“What happened?” Bucky asked when he finally woke. He looked down to where his arm had previously been broken. He turned it this way and that, marveling. “How did…”

“I fixed it. You’re welcome,” Loki snapped. 

Bucky inched himself into a seated position. When he realized that nothing hurt quite as much as it had, he smiled. “Once they thaw out, those guys are never gonna rob anyone else ever again. I’ve never seen anyone so scared. That move with the ice was pretty good. Better than anything you’ve done before. New spell you’ve been practicing?”

“I don’t know what it was. It just happened. But this isn’t the first time strong emotion has allowed me to perform advanced magic, as we both know. The important thing is that it worked.”

“We’re gonna have to avoid this neighborhood from now on.”

“And be a little less conspicuous about spending money,” Loki added.

“The worst thing is that they got the purse. It froze right along with them.”

“They cannot hope to use it. Only I can produce funds from it.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t do us any good, does it? Can you redo the spell?” Bucky asked. “It’ll take me a few weeks, but I can scrounge up the cash for you to use as a base.”

“Yes, I can redo it. But come now, let’s go before the proprietors of this house return.”

* * *

Bucky was fine, but Loki was not. The trauma of that evening did not dissipate, even after months back at home. Loki saw Bucky bleeding and moaning in the street every night when he closed his eyes. The sound of Bucky’s arm breaking played in Loki’s head during moments of silence. For the first time, the man in the tank fought other images for dominance in Loki's nightmares.

The people Loki cared about numbered precious few. His parents could more than take care of themselves. Thor was thoughtless and rash, but possessed the physical strength to best anyone in a fight. But Bucky wandered dangerous streets unarmed, and possessed bones that snapped like twigs. He spent most of his time with a chronic invalid who courted infectious diseases, and he lived in a city of fast-moving vehicles that regularly ran people down. Bucky was surrounded by hazards, and not only was Loki rarely around to save him, he was scheduled to go away for a long time.

Loki had known for some time that Bucky was human, but the time bond made this fact easy to forget. If he was honest with himself, he’d actively tried to forget it. Loki still didn’t know what to make of holding dear someone from a race and realm the Aesir thought so little of. When their visits had first begun, so long ago, he’d kept them secret for fear that the grown-ups would deem him too little to wield magic so powerful. Since learning Bucky’s origins, he now also kept them secret because he knew they would not allow him to consort so closely with a Midgardian peasant. His head agreed that such an association was beneath him even as his heart refused to care. He knew that Bucky’s days technically numbered very few, but so many centuries had already passed; the magic had lulled Loki into an illusion of eternity. 

Their recent altercation had forced him to face the reality of Bucky’s humanity, and with it, his delicate mortality. 

He became obsessed with finding a way to eradicate the differences between them.

He had seen a possible answer to his problem before, though only now did he have any use for it. 

Father had only allowed Thor and Loki entrance to the treasure vault once, long ago when they were small, but he remembered the day well. Father had not gone into much detail about all of the treasures on display, but Loki had read enough forbidden books over the years to divine the identity of a number of them. 

Among all the objects kept there, there was one that might serve his purpose.

Sneaking into the treasure vault was no small feat. Even this very first step of his plan required years of study to master a complicated mix of diversionary magic and illegal lock-breaking spells. He had no doubt that each object was tethered to an invisible alarm system, but luckily, he need only look at what he wanted, not take it, nor even touch it.

He’d paid little attention to the Tablet of Life and Time on his first visit, passing it over in favor of shinier, more colorful objects, but today he walked directly to it. The tablet was broken in many places, clearly only a small piece of a much larger ancient monument. However, the part that remained, he had read, bore an inscription for a formula—the Lifeline Formula, which was said to strengthen and rejuvenate its user, allowing him to reach the full potential of his race. Loki did not know exactly what this meant, nor how it might manifest, but it was the best thing he could think of to provide Bucky with some protection, at least until he could get his hands on something even more potent and permanent. 

He carefully copied the inscription onto a piece of paper, quadruple checking that he had rendered every line and every curve correctly. 

It would take him many more years, he knew, but he vowed to teach himself how to translate the runes. He knew translating would only be the first of many difficult steps. Even once he reached a place where he could compile a list of ingredients and pieces of equipment needed for the potion, he doubted they would be easy to acquire. He doubted many of them could even be obtained in Asgard. 

Luckily, he was already scheduled to embark on a realm-spanning voyage.

In the meanwhile, there were other measures he could take to safeguard his friend in his absence.

* * *

Bucky stared at the targets and heavy crossbows Loki had dropped on his bedroom floor.

“What’s this about?” 

“This sort of activity is hardly the way I wish to spend our time together, but given your appalling lack of self-preservation and truly astronomical idiocy—”

“You’re such an asshole sometimes.”

“—I have deemed it necessary.”

“I get that you want me to protect myself, but this is Brooklyn. I can’t walk down Fourth Avenue looking like Robin Hood.”

“I intend to take the same approach with you that the masters did with me. I started with archery, and then, once I’d learned the fundamentals, I moved on to knife work, which builds on the concepts of aim and precision, and adds in choreographed close-body strategy. Your only job is to find us a suitable place to work.”

* * *

“Hey, can you stay later than usual next time? Come Saturday instead of Friday?” Bucky asked at the tail end of summer.

They had just spent yet another long afternoon in a desolate corner of Greenwood Cemetery with the archery equipment. Bucky had progressed even more quickly than Loki had anticipated; unlike Loki, he actually enjoyed the practice. 

“As long as I am forewarned, it matters little how long I stay or what day I come,” Loki replied. “Your schedule is the impediment, not mine. But why do you ask?”

“Well, there’s a dance Saturday night. You wanna come with?”

“I thought I lived in London,” Loki said, trying to feel out the situation before answering. “Wouldn’t it be suspicious if I appeared again?”

“Steve’s the only one who would remember you, and he isn’t going. This dance is at a church over on Flatbush. It’s not my usual crowd, so it’ll be just you and me.”

“I thought you had stopped going to church.”

“No, I said I don’t _wanna_ go anymore,” Bucky clarified. “What’s one guy who maybe turned water into wine two thousand years ago compared with…” He gestured vaguely at Loki. “Magic and the Bifrost and all of it. The bible seems so small now, kinda dumb. Hell, now that I know what’s out there, this whole world seems kinda small. But it’s not like I can explain all that to anyone. So, I’m stuck going to church and pretending to be a good little Catholic boy until I’m grown up enough to get my own place and do as I like. Anyway, the church is hosting the dance, but there’s nothing religious about it. Come on, it'll be fun.”

“All right,” Loki acquiesced. “I’ll go. But I don’t know the steps. Nor am I familiar with the customs surrounding such an event.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Bucky said. “I know enough about the customs for both of us. And I can teach you the steps. I bet you’ll catch on quick and have partners lining up.”

“I doubt I’ll want to dance with anyone aside from you.”

Bucky gave Loki a strange look. “Boys don’t dance together.”

“You’ll have to dance with me in order to teach me the steps, won’t you?”

“Yeah, but that’s different. That’s just practice. It doesn’t count.”

Loki didn’t see how, and found the rule arbitrary and unnecessarily limiting, but Bucky was the resident here, so he didn’t argue.

* * *

The faster pace of music here required dancing that was much more vigorous than that to which Loki was accustomed. 

“Ow!” Loki exclaimed when Bucky kicked him in the shin for the fifth time. 

“Sorry, sorry. I keep forgetting I’m not a girl.”

“You do know I’ll not let you forget you actually said that,” Loki teased.

Bucky groaned. “Don’t I though?”

* * *

A multitude of boys and girls ranging in age from a few years older to a few years younger than Loki and Bucky crowded the poorly decorated church hall. The girls all looked as though they’d put quite a lot of effort into getting ready for what seemed, to Loki’s eyes at least, a rather shabby affair. A sad-looking band—nothing like the ones at the grown-up clubs Loki and Bucky sometimes snuck into—tuned their instruments in a corner. Everyone ranged themselves around the sides of the room, leaving the large area in the middle empty. 

“This is a terribly inefficient use of space,” Loki whispered.

“Everyone’s working up to the dancing, is all,” Bucky replied. “Just you wait.” 

They’d bought Loki a new outfit on their way there (Bucky was now too much taller for them to share clothes as they once had), and Bucky had slicked back Loki’s hair with pomade. 

He felt ridiculous.

“Let’s get some food, huh?” Bucky suggested. 

They piled their plates and secured a small space for themselves along the wall. They talked and ate in peace for a long while, watching the room fill up. Their conversation was interrupted by the approach of two girls.

“You’re Bucky Barnes, aren’t you?” one of them said. 

She wore a purple dress with a big skirt and a large bow on the side of her blond head. She clearly thought she looked very alluring; Loki thought she looked like a particularly unappetizing pastry. But either Bucky disagreed, or else his affability knew no bounds. Instead of dismissing her with a poisonously polite insult, as Loki would have done, he unleashed a rakish grin. Bucky specialized in many types of charm, but this was a variation Loki had not before seen him practice. For the first time, he got an inkling of what it was that kept Bucky afloat in a steady stream of admirers.

“I sure am,” Bucky said, “though I don’t think we’ve met. I would have remembered it, I’m sure.”

She giggled. Loki tried not to gag.

“I’m Betty Cartwright,” the girl said. “I’ve heard about you.”

“Good things, I hope.”

Boldly, she said, “People say you know how to show a girl a good time.”

“Is that what you’re looking for?”

“Depends,” the girl said, leaning in.

“Depends on what?”

“On whether or not people are right.”

To Loki’s surprise, he found himself sharing a moment of empathy with Betty’s friend. She looked as mortified by all this as he felt. They caught one another’s eye and grimaced in unison.

Bucky looked between Betty and Loki a few times before settling his heated gaze on Loki. “You okay if I…”

“Go ahead,” Loki sighed. There was hardly any other answer allowed him; he didn’t know why Bucky had bothered to ask.

Betty did not extend the same courtesy to her friend. Without asking permission or taking any leave, she skipped off to the dance floor with Bucky.

Loki was left with the friend, who took the place beside Loki that Bucky had vacated. She was a little taller than he was, with straight brown hair, twinkling brown eyes, and freckles sprinkled across her nose. Loki had recently become fascinated with Midgardian freckles; no one in Asgard possessed such a feature. She also had a friendly smile that reminded him of Bucky’s more genuine ones.

“I’m Anne,” she said.

“Luke,” Loki replied, deciding to fall back on his old alias.

“Sorry about all that.” She nodded at Bucky and Betty’s retreating figures.

“It isn’t your fault.”

“I guess he’s one of the popular boys around here. He goes to a different school and a different church, though, she says.”

“So he’s told me. This is not his usual coterie.”

Anne slurped on her straw and looked at Loki with new interest.

“Say, you talk like Leslie Howard. Are you English?”

“It appears so, doesn’t it?”

“How long have you been in New York for?”

“Not long.”

“Yeah, me, too,” she said. “We just moved here from Los Angeles a month ago. Betty’s mother and mine work at the telephone company together. I don’t think she really likes me much, to be honest. Our mothers are making her be my friend, at least until school starts and I can meet more people.”

That explained a lot. Loki had been wondering why someone as… inoffensive… as Anne was here with someone like Betty, to whom he had taken an instant and violent dislike. Having been forced for so many years to endure Thor’s friends because there was no one else available to him, he could understand her predicament.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine come September,” he said.

“I hope so. I didn’t really want to come tonight,” Anne continued, “but she kind of dragged me. This is my first time out.” 

“Mine, too,” Loki admitted. “I, too, have only one friend in this city, although unlike you, I very much enjoy his company. He dragged me out tonight as well.”

“Sorry you got stuck with me.”

Loki looked at her long and hard. He realized that, for all the times he’d come here, this was the first real, friendly conversation he’d had with someone other than Bucky—almost with anyone his age, ever.

“I think I could have fared worse than being stuck with you,” he said.

She blushed a little at that. “Likewise, I guess.”

They fell into a shy silence and watched their more outgoing friends dance.

“Which school are you going to go to?” she asked a little while later. “Maybe we’ll be in the same class.”

“I’ve always been privately tutored,” Loki absently replied, without thinking that perhaps he ought to come up with a more believable tale. He was too busy wondering how he could hex Betty without Bucky knowing he’d done it.

Anne exhaled into her straw, expressing her awe with bubbles. “Are you some sort of lord?”

“Something like that.”

“Then what are you doing _here?_ ” She gestured at this poor gathering.

“I’ve been asking myself the same question.” Loki reached over to a nearby pitcher and poured more lemonade for both himself and Anne. “You said you are from Los Angeles. Have you ever experienced an earthquake?”

Loki had become obsessed with earthquakes ever since learning of their existence. They didn’t have such dramatic geological phenomena in Asgard. The people here may have lacked magic, he thought, but the terrain itself more than made up for it in power. He was thrilled to finally meet someone from the state where earthquakes most frequently occurred.

“There was one last year, in Long Beach, near my house,” she said. “It was really scary.”

“Tell me what it felt like. Tell me everything.”

He spent the next little while listening in rapt attention to all the chilling particulars. The music was so loud that they had to stand quite close in order for him to catch every word. He even allowed her to shake him a bit, to approximate the sensation. Although she needed to be prodded into the gorier details, she turned out not to be the worst storyteller.

The band wrapped up the previous slow dance (horrors) and transitioned into the Charleston. 

Anne’s foot began tapping.

“You don’t…” she began and then stopped herself; even in this dimmed light, Loki could see that she was blushing furiously, which produced interesting effects on her freckles. “You don’t maybe want to…”

This was the one dance Loki had mastered during his practice session. He was no Fred Astaire, but he thought he could manage. Moving to the dance floor would bring Loki closer to Bucky, and perhaps remind Bucky to pay attention to him. A glance at the clock over the door told him that he had been off dancing with Betty for quite some time. Time that, admittedly, had flown by while Loki had been listening to Anne’s tales of earthquakes.

“Very well.” Instead of leading Anne by the hand, as Bucky had with Betty, Loki merely nodded, expecting her to follow.

The already hot night was made worse by the crush of sweaty bodies. Loki maneuvered them towards the center of the dance floor, close to where Bucky was flailing his limbs with abandon. Loki narrowly avoided being hit in the nose and tapped him on the shoulder. Bucky’s face lit up at the sight of him. 

“You having fun?” he asked.

“I suppose.”

Side by side, the two pairs danced. Loki could not overcome the stiffness common to Asgardian dancing, but he placed his feet correctly enough. Anne was an agreeable and pretty partner, but Loki’s natural diffidence caused him to almost unconsciously drift more closely to Bucky’s side than to his hers, which caused Anne to almost collide into Betty a few times. Betty seemed annoyed at their nearness and kept trying to lead Bucky away. He didn’t take the hint.

The song eventually changed and Loki stopped moving.

“What’s wrong?” Anne shouted into his ear.

“That’s the only dance I know,” Loki shouted back. 

“It doesn’t matter. You can make it up as you go along.”

Loki had never heard of such a thing. Dancing was a very precise art. She must have been mistaken to make such a suggestion, or else he had misheard her in the din. Regardless, he shook his head. If he stayed out here for much longer, he was going to faint. Extreme heat had always made him ill, and already he was beginning to feel dizzy. 

“I’m going to go get more lemonade,” he said.

She pouted a bit but quickly put on a brave face. “Well, thanks anyway. It isn’t every day you get to dance with a lord.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Spontaneously, he added, “It was a very nice dance.”

That brought the smile back. “Yeah.”

Loki began to walk away, but Bucky’s hand on his wrist stopped him.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m thirsty. It’s dreadfully hot.”

Bucky quickly studied his face and then immediately turned back to Betty. “Sorry, but I’ve gotta go take care of my friend. He’s not feeling well.”

Betty’s simper morphed into something uglier. “Oh, this must be Rogers,” she snarled. The derision in her voice was unmistakable.

“What do you mean by that?” Bucky asked dangerously.

“I’ve heard how you’ve got some sickly, skinny little fairy always scrapping at your heels. Should’ve realized this was him. Why do you let him cramp your style like that? Unless you’re—”

Bucky’s face went fiery red. “Steve’s not—” 

“His name isn’t Steve,” Anne interrupted, looking at Betty in horror. 

“Oh?” Betty said. “You’ve got two of them?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know anything. You’re not even worth talking to,” Bucky said roughly. He pulled Loki along behind him, out of the hall and back onto the street.

“How did she know?” Loki asked as soon as they stepped into the cooler night air and he could breathe again. His head was still spinning, but now no longer from heat. “She got the species wrong, of course, but no one in this realm has ever come close to seeing me for what I really am. How could she possibly know?”

“Huh? How could she know what?” Bucky asked. He looked distracted and almost as sick as Loki had been feeling.

“She called me a fairy. Only, for some reason, she thought Steve was the one. Steve, who has no powers whatsoever!” This confusion had irrationally angered Loki.

“What are you talking about?” Bucky asked again.

“Of course that isn’t what I am, but she knew somehow that I wasn’t human. How did she sense the magic on me? Is she, too, a visitor from another realm? Perhaps she is Asgardian in disguise as well. Bucky, we shouldn’t have left. We must go back and confront her. What if she ruins our entire—”

“No, she’s not... Loki, calm down. She meant…” Bucky closed his eyes. “That’s not what fairy means. Well, it isn’t the only meaning.”

“What then?” Loki had long grown accustomed to the All-Speak sometimes failing to translate here; however, he’d never before run into an instance where a word had a definition other than what he knew.

“It means… It means…” Bucky sputtered. “It’s something you say when you want to insult someone. It doesn’t mean anything. Don’t worry about it. She isn’t onto you. She’s just a regular human girl. She didn’t think you were anything other than a regular human guy. Trust me.”

Loki felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned around to see Anne panting. She must have run after them.

“What do you want?” Bucky asked.

“Just wanted to say I was sorry,” she replied. “She shouldn’t have talked about you like that. Or whoever she was talking about. I just wanted you to know I don’t think you are… You know.”

Loki didn’t know, but as long as his secret was safe, he didn’t much care what the silly slang meant. Drawing himself up to his full height and making use of the royal mien he’d been practicing, he said, “Your apology is unnecessary, but well-received. Bucky, this is Anne. She is recently arrived from Los Angeles and is in need of new acquaintances. She is more than all right, and I would appreciate it if you looked out for her going forward.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow at Loki before turning to the girl. “Nice to meet you, Anne. Though I’ve gotta say, you've got terrible taste in friends.”

“She’s not my friend. I’m not going to hang around her anymore, no matter what my mother says.”

“Good for you,” Bucky replied. “Well, if my buddy here says you’re all right, you must be all right. There’s a dance over at St. Ignatius in two weeks if you wanna come meet more of my regular crowd. I’ll introduce you around.”

“Thanks. Maybe I’ll see you there?” she asked, looking at Loki.

Bucky and Loki nervously glanced at one another. 

“Uh…” Bucky said.

“It’s unlikely,” Loki said smoothly. “I’m only passing through. Back to England soon. You most likely shan’t see me again. In fact, it’s best if you forget we ever met. I wasn’t supposed to be out tonight. In fact,” he finished in a dramatic whisper, “my family and I aren’t supposed to be in this country at all.”

“Woah,” she breathed.

“Yeah,” Bucky said, playing along. “Best if you don’t ever mention you met us tonight. Don’t want the Feds after us. Come to the dance and I’ll say we met some other way, okay?”

“Sure thing. A lord _and_ a spy. Who’d have thought?”

It was apparently the done thing to walk an unaccompanied girl safely home. Luckily, she lived only two blocks away. After they’d seen her inside her building, they continued along their way. They stopped at a soda shop, where they sat on high stools and ordered enormous milkshakes. Far from sharing Loki’s mirth at the prank they had just played, Bucky looked terribly anxious and miserable. His shoulders hunched and he barely touched his ice cream.

“What’s wrong?” Loki asked.

“Nothing.” 

“You said it was only a silly insult,” Loki asked again. “If so, then why are you so upset?”

“You’re right. You’re right.” Bucky plastered an obviously forced smile on his face. “So, Anne. What was that all about, hey?”

“Oh, shut up,” Loki replied, caught between smugness and embarrassment, because even though he hadn’t been interested, he did feel some small thrill from the compliment. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Still, I’ve never seen you take to someone like that before. I’ve never seen you take to anyone at all, except me.”

She had been very nice, and it was a shame circumstances dictated that such the potential friendship could never be, but the twinges of jealousy on Bucky’s face almost made up for it.

* * *

Bucky spun around in shock and absent-mindedly pointed the gun right at Loki’s chest.

 _“Centuries?”_ he gasped.

Perhaps Loki shouldn’t have chosen the middle of one of their practice sessions to finally tell Bucky the news. 

They were in Far Rockaway, aiming at pigeons. Being late fall, the beach was empty, with no one to scold or stop them. Under Loki’s tutelage, Bucky now hit increasingly difficult targets nine times out of ten. He’d had many, many fewer lessons than Loki, as well as a less accomplished teacher, but assiduous practice in between visits had contributed to his mastery of first archery and then knife throwing. He was now working on aim with the Red Ryder BB gun they’d bought a few visits ago. They didn't have guns in Asgard, but the skills needed weren't that different from archery, really.

Loki had put off this conversation for a long time, but the day of his departure was fast approaching. Well, not that fast for him, but fast for Bucky.

“It is a very important ritual for the future All-Father,” Loki said. “And I’d appreciate it if you pointed the weapon away from my face.”

Bucky dropped the gun and slumped to the ground. Loki was gratified to see such sadness at his impending departure, but had little desire to dirty his trousers by sitting in the wet sand. He remained standing as he explained in more detail what this journey was about.

Bucky looked up suspiciously. “Something as big as this… they’d give the realms loads of time to prep. Your kind doesn’t move that fast. You’ve known about this for awhile, haven’t you?”

For someone whose scope was limited to his own isolated little world, Bucky had often proven surprisingly perspicacious about the larger workings of the universe.

“I’ve known for almost a year of your time,” Loki confessed. “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to taint our days together. But I also didn’t want to tell you on the very last visit.”

“How long have we got?”

“Eight, ten more weeks of your time? Honestly, you make it sound as though I’m being sent to my death. It’s hardly forever. I’ll be back.”

“Sure you will.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Instead of answering, Bucky clenched his jaw and set himself back to his task with cold precision. Nine fast-flying pigeons dropped out of the sky.

* * *

The hypothetical question Loki had long ago asked Thor—what aspects of Asgard he would savour if ever he were to leave it for a time—now became a real one. 

“Come with us tonight, Loki,” Thor said on their last afternoon, after everything had been packed. “We are spending the night in town, incognito. We plan to make merry until it is time to go to the Bifrost for the formal departure.”

“A night of drinking will leave you in terrible shape for such an important occasion.”

“If I am not to see Asgard again for so long, this is how I would like to remember it: happy and in the company of those I love best. Not lucid at a court function.”

“It is not an enticing enough prospect to tempt me,” Loki replied. “Enjoy your ale and your friends, brother. I will see you in the morning, when I will, as usual, do the work for both of us, while you struggle to keep the contents of your stomach.”

“As you wish. But what will you do on your last night at home? You must celebrate somehow. You must enjoy whatever your favorite pleasure is one last time. Create a memory that will sustain you through your absence.”

“I intend to,” he replied truthfully, but Thor’s words saddened him. They made him realize clearly, for the first time, that his favorite thing in Asgard was not in Asgard at all.

Loki waited until he saw his brother, covered in a large cloak, slip through the shadows between the garden walls and make his escape from the palace. Then he, too, donned a cloak and followed the same path. But where Thor had turned right towards the high street, Loki turned left towards the marina. 

He popped out of the cave onto a roof. Bucky was already sitting on the edge, with his back to him. Over the skyline before them, Loki could see the sun glowing dark orange, hanging low between two tall buildings in Manhattan. They were much closer to the river than where Bucky lived.

“Where are we?” Loki asked as he sat down.

“My great-aunt’s house. You’ve been here. I told my Ma I wanted to visit her for the weekend, since she isn’t feeling too well. She goes to bed awfully early, and she’s too deaf to hear us talking, so we can stay up as late as we want. I’ll probably have to leave you up here for a few minutes while I say goodnight, but then I’ll come get you.”

“You may not need to leave me.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’ve been working on an invisibility spell. So, perhaps I can come downstairs before time without her seeing.”

“You can turn invisible? No way.”

Loki said the words and maneuvered his fingers just so.

Bucky squinted at him. “You’re flickering.”

“Bother.”

“But still. That’s incredible.” Bucky grew contemplative. “I bet you’ll learn loads more stuff on this trip, huh? And show everybody you’re the worthy one to inherit the throne.”

“That is my goal. A few of the other realms are more open and appreciative of magic than we of Asgard. I had hoped to master this invisibility spell in time to sneak into some of the libraries, but it seems I need to continue working on it. My aim to apprentice myself to a few famous sorcerers during my various stops. And,” he added, “perhaps I can learn enough to finally take you away from here.”

“That’d be something.”

They sat quietly together, watching the sun dip lower and lower between the buildings.

“I guess there’s no way to send me a postcard?” Bucky asked.

“Unfortunately, no. But I brought a few things to help you pass the time until my return.”

“Yeah, what’s in that huge sack back there?” 

“I’ll show you when we go inside, where there’s more light.”

As discussed, Bucky left Loki alone for a few minutes while he fulfilled his duties to his aged relative. When he had successfully seen her off to bed, he came back up to the roof. Together, they carried downstairs the very large and very heavy bag Loki had lugged, with great effort, all the way to the cave. 

Bucky had commandeered the guest bedroom for them. It held a large and ornate four-poster bed and a large wooden dresser. There was even a sink in the corner. Hardly the Plaza, but it provided enough of a sense of occasion for their last visit.

Bucky sat cross-legged on the floor with his back against the bed. He picked up a nearby stack of containers and handed them to Loki.

“What’s this?” Loki asked.

“I stopped by Peter Luger’s today. I told them you were moving away, so we wouldn’t be coming by for lunch anymore. The whole staff chipped in. I didn’t have to pay a cent.”

Loki had already eaten back at the palace, but he was moved enough to find new appetite. 

“I brought you some snacks as well,” he said in between bites of his last, beloved, Midgardian steak. “Those cakes you like so much.”

When they had finished eating, Loki unpacked everything he had brought, itemizing them one by one.

“Three sets of throwing daggers, in varying sizes. Now that you have been moderately trained, my hope is that you will not go about unarmed. I already left the archery equipment here last time, so you have that. As many books as I could carry, for your continued studies. I made you an Elvish dictionary as well, since you expressed interest in learning a second tongue, in addition to Asgardian. And these music boxes, one for each language. I captured my voice reading aloud a long text in each one, so you can listen and practice your accent in my absence.”

Bucky gawped. “You… you made me a record of yourself?”

“I suppose you could call it that.”

“Gee, Loki, all this must have taken you ages.”

“I have time that you do not.”

Bucky winced. “Yeah, don’t I know it.”

Since they had never spoken of it, Loki hadn’t realized Bucky struggled with the differences between them as painfully as he himself did. However, just now, that which Bucky must have usually repressed flashed across his features. For just one second, he looked as distraught as Loki had felt ever since their mugging.

Loki hoped for a day when all this would no longer matter. He hoped this trip would allow him to accumulate everything he needed for the formula.

“I don’t have anything nearly as good to give you,” Bucky said. 

“But you have something, I sense.”

Bucky reached to the top of the dresser and handed Loki a sealed envelope. 

Loki made a motion to open it, but Bucky swatted his fingers away from the seal.

“Don’t open it now!”

“Well, when, then?”

“You’re supposed to save it for when you’re feeling down. I know sometimes you get like that. You get lonely or you don’t feel well or something. Maybe you won’t even need it on this trip. Maybe everything’ll be perfect, and you’ll make a boatload of new friends and never have a single bad day. But if you ever do feel at your very worst, you can read that and it’ll be like I’m there to cheer you up.”

This was a strange sort of gift, and, honestly, rather a disappointment compared with the great efforts of time and magic that Loki had poured into his. However, he could tell that it was earnestly given. “All right. Thank you.”

He meant to leave the bag here, so he slipped the envelope into his pocket before changing into the pajamas Bucky had brought for him. 

“What will you do with your newfound spare time?” Loki asked, much later, after they had brushed their teeth and were climbing into bed.

“Spend it with Steve, for sure. I’ve got to make the most of every day we’ve got. You’re not the only one I’m scared to lose, you know.”

“I’ve _told_ you. You aren’t losing me. I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Things’ll be different then. _We’ll_ be different. You might… you might be over it all by then. Over coming here. This is what you always wanted, isn’t it? A way to meet new people. The kinds of people you’re supposed to be hanging out with. Once you get out of the rut you’ve been in in Asgard, you won’t need me anymore.”

“I don’t need to _need_ you in order to want to see you.”

“If you say so.”

Bucky reached to turn out the light. The bed was quite large—large enough for them to spread out without running into one another. Still, Loki felt around until he touched Bucky’s fingers. He felt Bucky shiver a bit at the touch and pull back.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Uh. Nothing,” Bucky replied in the darkness. He held back for a moment before tentatively giving his hand over to Loki’s.

“This is the first time we’ve spent the whole night together since the very first time we met,” Loki observed. “Do you remember?”

“Yeah, Loki. I remember.”

They lay on their backs for a time, neither of them sleeping.

“You’re not going to be here when I wake up, are you?” Bucky suddenly asked.

“Probably not. We wouldn’t want your aunt to find me. If elderly people in this realm are anything like their counterparts in Asgard, she gets up with the dawn.”

Bucky chuckled. “You’re right. It’s the same. Well, in case I don’t get to say it before you go… See ya, Loki. I hope you have a really good trip.”

“Please try to restrain your martyr-like excesses so that I can find you in one piece when I return.”

Loki had meant to wait for Bucky to fall asleep in order to leave, but he must have dropped off first. When he woke, he felt Bucky’s sweaty palm still pressed against his and heard his soft snores. He looked out of the window and saw that it was almost dawn. 

He carefully untwined their fingers and crept out of the bed. He slipped out of his pajamas, but decided not to risk making noise that would wake Bucky. Clasping his bundle of clothes to his chest, he turned to take one last look at his friend, but the room was too dark to make out more than a shadow. In fact, the room was almost too dark to find the portal. He groped about for a minute before he found himself back in his own realm. He dressed in the cold and rapidly darkening cave. It was still early evening in Asgard, but he had to sail quickly in order to reach the mainland before nightfall. 

After almost a full night's nap, he wasn’t a bit tired, and the idea of going to bed again seemed ridiculous. Loki walked, covered by his thick cloak, to the tavern he knew was Thor’s favorite. He spotted them immediately, at a large table in the back that was already covered with tankards.

“Brother!” Thor cheered upon seeing Loki enter. “You came after all. I _am_ glad.”

Loki took a seat and forced himself to sip the ale Thor ordered for him, even though he was much more in the mood for breakfast. He even tolerated Fandral’s terrible jokes and Hogun’s disgusting belches. Not even he could begrudge having to share Thor’s company with them tonight, for Loki was about to set out on a grand adventure and would have his brother all to himself for a long time to come.

“What’s that?” Thor asked, reaching for the bit of white paper sticking out of the back of Loki’s trousers.

Loki shoved the envelope further inside the cloth and out of sight, crumpling it irrevocably. 

“It’s nothing.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These two chapters are necessary to set up a lot of later stuff, so please bear with me. We’ll get back to Bucky and Brooklyn in the chapter after next, I promise.

With weapons in their hands and armour on their backs, Thor and Loki were hiking up a mountain. Right now, a mile or so away, their hosts were watching as illusions of the princes waded into a fiery lake.

“I saw what you did, you rascal,” Thor growled. “You made the illusion appear much smaller than I really am.”

“The illusion is exactly as tall as you are,” Loki replied.

“You know full well I am not talking about the height.”

Loki grinned wickedly. “You can blame it on the cold shriveling it temporarily.”

“Cold? Standing beside a lake of fire? No one would believe it.”

“Then I suppose you shall have to work that much harder to prove its size to as many witnesses as possible. Something tells me this is one form of employment you will not mind.”

“Sometimes, Loki,” Thor said, laughing, “you do speak the truth.”

Loki tried and failed to repress a little smile. Thor answered with a grin of his own, and, without waiting for further instructions (when did he ever?), strode into the cave they had finally reached.

No matter how frustrated he had been feeling on the voyage so far, Loki _was_ glad to have Thor to himself. Perhaps by the time they returned home, he would have made himself so indispensable that Thor would have no need of his other friends. It would once again be as it had been when they were little. 

They were thirty years into their voyage, and still on their first realm. They’d left the capital of Muspelheim long ago and were now in a remote territory, one of many, many stops intended to introduce them to the rest of the realm. 

One of the tiresome traditions of this place, they’d recently learned over breakfast (or rather, Loki had learned, since Thor, as usual, had overslept after making entirely too merry the night before), was to send two champions into the fiery lake in an attempt to either befriend or defeat a dragon—Nidhogg, they called it—and dissuade it from further rampaging the countryside. These people had been failing for time immemorial, explaining the charred ruins Loki saw everywhere. Why they bothered continuing to build around here, he couldn’t understand. 

The residents of this fire realm naturally assumed their august guests should partake in the tradition. Loki and Thor, however, knew the thing would be impossible. It was not a question of courage. The Aesir simply were not built to withstand such heat. However, they were too wary of appearing cowardly to make their excuses. 

Loki’s research in books he’d stolen, both from Asgard and from the capital city in Muspelheim, had led him to a plan whereby they could take Nidhogg by surprise, and never have to enter the water at all. Over a hundred thousand years, the dragon had become accustomed to greeting (mocking, really) warriors in the lake, at the mouth of its lair complex. It was sure to be on its way there now. It had no reason to expect intruders to sneak in from behind, through the warren of passages that supplied air from the hillside—passages no one had ever thought to look for, before Loki. He and Thor (well, mostly Thor) would fight it inside the cave. They would rid this corner of Muspelheim of its most fearsome predator and be praised as heroes forever more.

Meanwhile, their doubles would satisfy the tradition by wading into the damn lake.

“This is not usually your preferred form of play, Loki,” Thor noted as they traversed the narrow and stench-filled tunnels towards the dragon’s lair. “You have never cared for such quests.”

“Perhaps I am fated to mature into an adventurer.”

Thor laughed, maddeningly. “I cannot say that I see it.”

As they drew closer to the main caverns, they stepped over carcasses that the dragon had collected over the ages.

“This breed of fish has been extinct for so long that many think it never existed at all,” Loki noted lightly, stepping over the skeleton in his path. 

“We are not here for a zoology lesson, brother,” Thor said, in a deeper and more serious voice than the one he usually used; enemies had already begun to recognize it as heralding storms and blood. “Our prey is close. Stay behind me.”

“Always,” Loki muttered. He had every intention of doing so, but not entirely for the reasons Thor assumed. He would keep one eye on Thor, and cast any spell needed to keep his brother safe. But he still had a second eye, which was on the lookout for something else entirely.

He had read and heard of legends pertaining to this dragon. The stories failed to identify it correctly, but Loki knew enough to guess that one of the items supposedly in its lair was the fabled Mead of Poetry, which bestowed wisdom and inspiration to he who drank it. A few drops of this beverage counted among the ingredients Loki needed for the Lifeline Formula that he hoped to make for Bucky. It was for this that he had decided to face the dragon; he could just as easily have talked himself and Thor out of the situation without humiliation.

They spied the end of a dagger-sharp tail waving out of a tunnel on the far side of the largest cavern. Their advantage would be here, where they had room to move around. 

Loki had enchanted Thor’s blade that morning and explained how striking at a certain angle would bypass the otherwise protective nature of a dragon’s scales. Wasting no time, Thor began the proceedings by hacking off a good three feet of the dragon’s tail. That got its attention, but so great was its bulk, and so narrow was the tunnel it had gone into to meet the supposed swimmers, that it took some time for it to turn itself around. 

Meanwhile, behind Thor, Loki picked up four different vials of glowing liquid that he saw nearby, and furtively hid them in his pockets. He took what looked like ancient charms and amulets, for good measure. Even if the Lifeline Spell did not call for them, such items might come in handy later in life.

He was too small and skinny to be of much use in the fight, but there was a moment when one of the dragon’s paws nearly stomped on Thor. Just as he had when those men had attacked him and Bucky in the alley, Loki felt a protective rage sweep over him. This time, he knew what was coming and directed the ice towards the dragon's leg, freezing it at the joint. Thor recovered his footing and shattered it with his sword. From there, it was short work for him to finish the dragon off.

“It is too big to remove from this place, but we need some way to show that we have slain it,” Thor said when he was finished, covered in blood and sweat. 

“Take its eye. That is the most easily portable and impressive token.”

“Well thought, brother.”

They went back out the way they came and ran, as quickly as they could, down the mountain. Loki cloaked them with the invisibility spell he had finally mastered. When they drew close to where their hosts waited, he caused the illusions to re-emerge from the lake. He and Thor positioned themselves to take the shadows’ places at the edge of the water. No one knew they had been elsewhere. 

Thor raised his hands high above his head, displaying Nidhogg’s disembodied yellow eye. The cheer of the crowd was deafening, and Thor and Loki were carried back to the castle on the shoulders of the people.

Thor paraded around the trophy of their adventure, but Loki had secreted away the real prizes.

* * *

Five more duchys and a year in something that somewhat resembled a medieval monastery later (not that Loki had anyone to whom he could voice the comparison), Thor, Loki and their retinue waved their final goodbye to Muspelheim. The familiar beam of the Bifrost surrounded them. Heimdall greeted them with his usual impassivity, but Loki thought he could detect a little fondness in his manner. 

“How did you enjoy your first leg?” Heimdall asked.

“Delightful,” Thor said. “I’ve never met friendlier people nor seen such interesting flora.”

“It was beastly hot,” Loki said. “I’ve never been more uncomfortable, nor for so long.”

“That is to be expected in a fire realm,” Heimdall replied, with something like worry. “But I had my eye on you, in case you became too ill. Luckily, you did not.”

That was kinder than Loki had expected, and he knew not how to respond. He could not imagine why Heimdall should have been looking out for him so particularly.

The rest of their attendants were allowed to return home for the evening, but, per the tradition, Thor and Loki were not allowed out of the Bifrost’s dome. They waited, stared longingly at the spires of home that were so close, and tried to coax news out of Heimdall.

“Where are we off to now?” Thor asked the next morning, when they awoke, stiff and parched on the floor of the dome, waiting for the delegation to return. Already, they could see everyone coming, far away at the other end of the Brifrost, with Mother and Father leading the way.

“We’re going to Alfheim, of course,” Loki replied. “Did you not read the itinerary?” 

“Why would I, when I have you to memorize it for me?”

Loki groaned.

* * *

The King and Queen accompanied their sons at the start of each leg of their journey, just long enough to make initial introductions. Once they left, the real itinerary began, with the princes learning more about all the different customs and places of interest in that realm, including the backwaters. Their hosts and accommodations ranged from potentates to paupers, depending on what the leaders of the realm thought would be most beneficial and educational for them to experience.

By the time they were a hundred years into their journey—a third of the way, if everyone kept to schedule, which of course they wouldn’t—Loki and Thor had visited enough realms, and enough varied corners of those realms for Loki to have noticed a definite pattern: while he and Thor were introduced equally as the sons of Odin, it was always Thor who received the bulk of the attention and soliciting. His stature had to be the impediment, Loki told himself. He was still short and skinny and odd-looking, even as Thor increased in bulk and handsomeness all the time. No matter what Loki did, he remained a small, dark spot beside the golden quintessence of Asgardian strength.

Even beyond Loki’s hopes to impress the citizens of the universe with his political worth, the sojourn so far had disappointed his hopes to make new friends. For all that he was worlds away from home, the general tenets of his existence had not changed. Within days of arriving at a place, Thor always gathered an entourage. Loki still ended up sitting quietly in a corner, no matter how hard Thor tried to include him or sing his praises.

Loki could only hope that his growth spurt was coming. He could feel _something_ happening to him. A scratching, puffing, stretching ache, as though something inside him was being held back. He tried not to speak of it, for fear that Mother and Father and Heimdall would send him home for good. So he struggled through the days, trying to keep a brave face. However, his physical misery, not to mention his loneliness, contributed to the increasing sharpness of tongue and peevishness of temper that Thor sometimes noted. Where he had once simply teased, he now found himself purposefully using words as pinpricks, as ways to vent his dissatisfaction with everything.

Straining himself to perform the menial labour involved in their latest placement hardly helped. Still, he minded it less than Thor.

“I’m counting the days until we get back to civilization,” Thor complained as they raked soil in preparation for planting. “I like this realm, but this particular corner lacks charm.”

“Not enough admirers around to listen to you boast?” Loki muttered.

“I never boast.”

Loki raised an incredulous eyebrow in reply.

“Very well,” Thor corrected himself. “I only rarely boast. But that isn’t why I itch to leave. Pretty as it is here, a farmer’s life is not for me. Nor is it for you, or so I’d assumed. I must say, I expected you to devise a stratagem to get us out of this placement before now.”

“Perhaps I am hardier than you, despite appearances.”

Loki was not lying. While weak and easily exhausted, he didn’t mind it here. Yes, he preferred life at court, but his days in New York had given him more practice finding fun in poor surroundings than Thor. Even the scratchy linens they had been given to wear hardly bothered him; they reminded him of his summertime wardrobe from Woolworth’s.

He also had his own interests to keep him diverted here, unbeknownst to Thor or their hosts.

This planet was too remote for there to be any treasures hidden about, but it afforded Loki the opportunity to create one of the items on his list. The Lifeline Formula called for the pollen of a rare flower grown by the magician’s own hand, and harvested by moonlight. 

He calculated how much longer he needed to stay here in order to ensure the harvesting of the pollen.

“I may be able to find a way to extricate us from this stage in a few months’ time,” he told Thor, “but anything before then would be the height of rudeness.” 

“What would I do without you?” Thor asked with a grateful smile.

“I shudder to think.”

* * *

Loki’s illness only worsened once they reached Vanaheim, leaving him unable to join many of the outdoor events that had been planned for them. He had flashes of being too hot and too cold, by turns, and could not keep down any of his food. 

Hogun had just arrived for a surprise visit, telling Thor that, while he and Loki might not be allowed home during their voyage, there was nothing stopping _him_ from visiting his home realm. The two of them went off together for the evening.

Between his illness and his annoyance, Loki excused himself from the next day’s activities. He took his breakfast in his room and gave into his tiredness. He was tired of moving about. He was tired of living in rooms that were not his, and having to pack his things so often. He was tired of having so little time to himself. He was tired of feeling just as lonely as he had at home.

For the first time, Loki thought of the letter Bucky had given him. He’d thought it stupid at the time, but today, he decided it would have been nice to have, exactly the sort of common-place but clever bit of help Bucky had always been so good at providing. Unfortunately, he didn’t have it. By the time Loki had gotten back to his rooms on that last morning, stumbling and muzzy from all the wine Thor and his friends had cajoled him into drinking, he’d absent-mindedly hidden it away along with the marble. Whatever cheer Bucky had hoped to provide him in absentia remained in Loki’s room at home, realms away.

He did have one thing that might serve, though, a gift from his penultimate visit that he’d had plenty of time to pack. Loki reached into one of the secret pockets of his traveling trunks and pulled out a book. It was a large, handsome tome—handsome for New York, although not for Asgard. (New York bookmakers, in Loki’s opinion, did not revere their craft as highly as they ought to have. The covers were thin, and the pages easily damaged. They were not meant to last more than a few years. But no wonder, as those who bought them lasted scarcely longer.) Knowing that translations muddied and confused the All-Speak, Bucky had sought out a copy of _The Count of Monte Cristo_ —one of Loki’s favourite library borrows—in its original French. He’d even paid for it with his own money, for some stupid reason that Loki couldn’t understand. Bucky, in his infinite practicality, had reminded Loki to cast a spell of preservation over it so that it would remain intact throughout the voyage. 

His room didn’t have a balcony, but there was a ledge outside the window just wide enough to accommodate his bony bottom and to tuck his legs underneath him. He spent the entire day out there, and the next, as well. Thor came to check on him, and servants left his meals in the foyer, but otherwise, he remained undisturbed. He had been so lonely in the middle of the Vanaheimian court, but only now, in escaping to Paris in his mind, did he finally feel surrounded by good company.

Loki had just reached his favorite chapter—the one where the previously overlooked and discounted grandfather dramatically revealed the true extent of his genius—when he found something tucked in between the pages. 

It was a four-strip of photographs. Bucky must have slipped it inside, knowing that even if Loki didn’t read the entire book, he’d certainly revisit the scene.

Loki peered at the pictures. He remembered the occasion immediately. A photo booth at the county fair in Bay Ridge. He and Bucky had positioned themselves as best they could in the too-small space, half sitting on one another because the metal seat was made for only one. Their arms were pulled tightly around one another’s shoulders, and their temples touching. Loki, who had never had his picture taken before, had been focused on looking straight at the camera and on putting his best face. He hadn’t realized until now how Bucky’s fond smile tilted in his direction, and how he had tried and failed to make eye contact with Loki. Loki had never actually seen the pictures, and had fussed at the time at having been robbed, but now he saw that Bucky must have pocketed them and pretended the machine hadn’t worked, all so he could surprise Loki with them later, now.

Loki had never missed Bucky between visits, at least, not the way he would have missed Thor if they had ever been separated, and he hadn’t missed Bucky all this time, either. It was difficult to miss something that was such an irregular part of one’s life, more of a treat than a staple. Bucky had always begun to look forward to Christmas when the leaves started to turn, but he never actively missed it the rest of the year. This was how Loki had always felt about his trips to New York. Even as he continued to acquire artifacts and ingredients for the Lifeline Formula, he did so out of an increasingly distant and academic sense of curiosity and magical ambition. The urgency of its application specifically for Bucky lessened the longer Loki was away. 

But now, so unexpectedly presented with Bucky’s face and his own face—wearing a happy, carefree grin he hadn’t felt on it in longer than he’d realized—Loki missed Bucky with a stabbing hunger that added to the already terrible pain in his head. 

He was still staring, still missing, when a gust of wind blew the strip of photographs right out of his hand. He jerked so hard in his fruitless attempt to grab it back that he almost dropped the book off the ledge, too, not to mention himself. Loki howled as he watched the paper flutter down and away, out of sight as it flew around a corner of the castle.

He went inside and began to dress himself in preparation for going outside. He had to find the photographs before anyone else did. That would lead to awkward questions requiring complicated answers. He flung his door open, but someone was standing at the threshold, about to knock.

It was a youth of about his age, or a little older (it was sometimes difficult to tell with non-Aesir). Loki had noticed him around court over the past few weeks. He was difficult _not_ to notice, with his thin but elegant build, choppy yet striking silver hair and violet eyes that almost literally sparkled. He was arresting to look at, despite an arrangement of features so unlike what was usually prized as beautiful in Asgard. Moreover, this youth had vaguely attracted Loki’s attention by being the only one who quietly reacted to his most subtly clever and cutting twists of speech; where everyone else either misunderstood or was foolish enough to take the barbs as compliments, this boy had once or twice caught Loki’s eye and grinned in mirth, giving a quick but unmistakable hand gesture of acknowledgement. They’d never had an occasion to speak, though.

Under normal circumstances, Loki would not have minded the opportunity to finally make conversation with him, but right now he was in a hurry. 

“What do you want?” he snapped. 

The youth held up the strip of photographs. His eyes sparkled ( _quite_ literally, Loki decided). 

“I assumed this was yours.”

Loki snatched it out of his hands. “Where did you get it?”

“It floated by my window. I was curious as to what it was, so I caused it to float onto my balcony. There was no name, but your face more than clarified its ownership.”

Loki bristled to find that this youth had a proper balcony where he did not. But more importantly: “You caused it to float onto your balcony? How?”

The youth placed his lips between his thumb and index finger, sucked a delicate breath, and hummed a beautiful note. The photographs slipped from Loki’s fingers and back into the youth’s waiting hand. 

“You can do magic!” Loki breathed, but not before he had snatched his property back and warded it to himself with a charm.

“Of course I can,” the youth replied, and proceeded to break Loki’s charms and cause the paper to fly into the air.

Loki ran after it, and the youth cheekily permitted himself entry into Loki’s rooms in order to continue the chase. They cast spell after spell, tumbling and reaching over one another, with both legs and spells, trying to emerge as the victor.

After a few minutes, they both collapsed onto the floor, laughing. 

“I heard you were unwell,” the youth said. “But you seem perfectly fine to me.”

“You asked after me?”

“Of course.” 

Loki smiled, gratified that someone, especially someone as interesting as this youth, had noticed him.

“I’m Vifill. I am third son of the lord of Gimlé, in the realm of Vídbláin,” the youth said, with an elaborate and perfectly executed bow.

Vídbláin, a beautiful sub-realm above Alfheim, had been Loki’s favorite stop so far, but he and Thor had not been allowed to stay nearly as long as they’d wanted (though Loki had managed to abscond with a vial of dew for his list).

“Loki Odinson of Asgard.”

“Everyone knows that.” But Vifill bowed all the same.

“You would be surprised,” Loki grumbled. “Why did I not meet you when I was in Vídbláin?”

“Because I have lived here in Vanaheim for ages. My father already has an heir, and a warrior spare. The fun of being the third son is that I am free to pursue whatever passions I want. I asked to be sent to live with my uncle, who is the Master of the Records and Treasury.”

The Master of the Records kept Vanaheim’s impressive library. It was one of the highest positions in the realm, occupied only by the highest nobles. Loki had very briefly made the current Master’s acquaintance, but had not yet had a chance to worm his way into his good graces and win admission to the collection.

This Vifill could be a very useful person to know. And more than that, Loki still had not forgotten the mischievous shared glances they had shared. Vifill not only knew magic, but had actually _asked_ to spend all his time in the library. Here was someone his own age, a potential friend who was real and socially well-matched, who liked the same things Loki did, and who wouldn't have to be secret. Perhaps Vifill was everything Loki had been waiting and hoping for.

“It is very nice to meet you,” Loki said stiffly, but he meant it.

“You’ve livened up the court since your arrival. For me, at any rate. I doubt the others understand half your double meanings.”

“No, they are most of them too stupid.”

“I’d say about three-quarters,” Vifill agreed with a laugh.

Vifill proceeded to help himself to Loki’s mostly untouched lunch. Loki didn't know how or whether to voice his knee-jerk irritation at such presumption. He wanted to chide, but he also didn’t want to drive Vifill away. Loki didn't know how to make friends with other princes. Things had been simpler in New York, where nothing Loki did truly mattered, and with Bucky, who had existed outside social norms.

As though cognizant of where Loki’s attention had wandered, Vifill blew the photographs back into his fingers.

“I’m desperate to know what that is,” he said. “I’ve never seen the like. It is _you_ , the most perfect likeness I have ever seen, excepting the colour, but I suppose nothing can be perfect. I rubbed my finger over it but could not detect any ink. It is as though your essence was siphoned from you and… I have studied many spells, but I haven’t the first idea how this magic was done. There are even multiple different, though closely related, moments depicted. It’s extraordinary.”

“It is a rare form of magic from… from… well, I made it up myself, you see,” Loki said. “Each of the four iterations was a different experiment. It’s extremely complicated. I couldn’t possibly explain.”

“My studies have likely followed a different path from yours, and my skills are likely inferior to yours, but I might be able to follow an explanation if you would be so generous as to attempt one.”

Loki appreciated the deference and the flattery (no one, not even Bucky, had ever engaged with him in this way, so politely and on his favorite subject), but he had to shake his head. “It was an accident. I am still trying to recreate the magic. I couldn’t explain it if I tried.”

“Pity. Perhaps we could try together one day when you are well again.”

“Perhaps,” Loki said noncommittally. He was heartened by the way Vifill’s face fell. He quickly added, “Or we could work on other spells. I would like that.”

That worked to bring the smile back. “Whatever you wish. Who is the boy with you?”

“No one of importance,” Loki lied. 

Vifill looked more interested at that. “I know what that means. It means someone very important indeed. Are you and he…” He made a suggestive gesture.

“No, of course not, don’t be absurd,” Loki sputtered.

“I would hardly take such an assumption as an insult,” Vifill replied. “I would consider myself lucky to share such an embrace with such a youth.”

“We aren’t embracing. And I don’t know what you mean.”

“He is very comely. Don’t you think so?”

“I don’t know,” Loki said with a shrug. “He really is no one, though. Just a subject I chose for the experiment when I made the pictures.”

Vifill looked unconvinced, but was too polite to argue further with a prince of Asgard. 

“I’ll tell you how I made the pictures if you can get me into the oldest section of the library,” Loki said next. 

“What are you looking for?” Vifill asked.

This boy seemed all right, but Loki didn’t know yet how much to share with him. “I’m not sure yet. I’ll have to see what’s there first.”

“I am not sure it will be possible. My uncle is very strict about such things. Outsiders are not allowed. Not even you.”

“Well, whatever you can manage will be appreciated,” Loki replied.

“What are your plans for the rest of the day?” Vifill asked later, after they’d traded a few spells and laughed about the ridiculous people at court.

“I didn’t have any plans. I was simply going to read.” 

“If you aren’t doing anything else, I could show you the menagerie.”

“It’s locked,” Loki said. “No one is allowed inside.”

“I have a secret key.”

Loki thought about this, and all the pranks he could play with such access. Specifically pranks on Hogun for daring to come here and interrupt what was supposed to be Loki’s time with Thor. Truly, this Vifill was a treasure, and from the twinkle in his eyes, it was clear his mind was thinking at least somewhat along the same lines as Loki’s.

Suddenly, the rest of their stay in Vanaheim seemed like it might not be so bad.


	10. Chapter 10

After decades of touring the rest of the realm, the Asgardian delegation had recently returned to Freya’s palace for farewell banquets and festivals. 

Hogun had remained for the duration of their time in Vanaheim, which made this the only leg of the voyage so far in which Thor’s attention had been splintered. Luckily, Loki had someone of his own to distract him. Vifill’s uncle had had been only too pleased to allow his apprentice to accompany the Asgardians, if it meant solidifying their family’s friendship with that of Odin’s. 

“I cannot believe it,” Vifill said, laughing so hard that he splayed himself across the pillows on the floor of Loki’s guest room. He practically rolled onto Loki, and was apparently too overcome with hilarity to move away again. “Tell me again. Tell me again how Thor looked dressed as a bride.”

“Like the most perfectly hideous maiden imaginable, all biceps and huge feet and dusty hair, and with bits of his beard poking through the veil,” Loki replied, also laughing so hard that the punch he had swallowed a moment ago began to drip from his nose. Disgusting. “And when he removed the veil…”

“What I would have given to see it. I cannot decide whose face would have been more entertaining. Thrym’s at having been so deceived, or your brother dressed as a woman. Oh, it was a perfectly brilliant prank, Loki, your very best. Even better than convincing everyone that that eight-legged horse was your progeny.”

“And to think, if my brother had been less of an oaf, I would never have had cause to enact such a plan. But he is exactly the sort of fool who would lose his hammer, so soon after being given it. I’m sure there were easier ways to help him get it back, but none so entertaining.”

Loki hadn’t been given anything at all during their stay here, much less something as precious as Mjolnir. There had never been any question that he would help his brother get his hammer back, but he was jealous and had therefore devised the most humiliating possible plan for retrieving it. They had snuck away on their own to enact the plan, so very few people knew of the adventure. However, Loki counted on Vifill to spread the embarrassing story. Already, there were titters of it in the hallways, and Thor stomped around with a constantly red face.

“Such a gift should have been yours in the first place,” Vifill said. “ _You_ would not have mislaid it.”

“I shall one day have even greater things,” Loki replied, and then smiled as a nicely cutting turn of phrase came to mind. “Let Thor keep his hammer. It suits him. It is blunt enough.”

Vifill laughed. “Well said.”

With someone around who not only appreciated his fondness for pranks and double-speak, but even encouraged it, Loki had been making a name for himself as a mischief-maker and dispenser of subtle verbal evisceration. Loki’s tongue had already been sharp before their meeting, but egged on by Vifill, he’d honed it into a dangerous blade.

“I wish you could accompany us for the rest of our trip,” Loki sighed.

“You know I would come with you if I could. But I can visit you in Asgard one day, if you’ll have me.”

“Of course I’ll have you. I’ll talk to Mother and Father as soon as we are home.”

“What is left on your tour?” Vifill asked.

“Jotunheim and then, lastly, Midgard,” Loki replied.

“The ugliest and most monstrous, followed by the stupidest and most trifling. They certainly saved the worst for last, didn’t they?”

Loki had grown accustomed to agreeing whenever Vifill denigrated something. One-upping each other in jagged barbs was a large part of their day-to-day, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it with this. “I grant you on Jotunheim,” he conceded. “I cannot believe they are sending us there at all, as if there were any culture worth learning about or anyone worth meeting—but Midgard… Midgard might not be so bad.”

“The main planet you get to via the world tree is undeveloped, and the people even less so. I have heard that they can be pretty, but are generally tiny, fragile, primitive creatures. Good for nothing except the most fleeting of pleasures. Your brother, I’m sure, will enjoy his stay. And as for the rest of the galaxy around it…” Vifill shrugged. “Nothing of interest has ever been heard of from there.”

“They might… They might be capable of more. Not all of them, of course, but a few of the humans might not be so inconsequential. We of the higher realms may underestimate their worth.”

“This is not the first time I have heard you champion them. From whence comes this uncommon love of mortals? You’ve never even met one.”

Loki struggled between warring desires—to keep the secret that he had harboured for so long that it had become a part of him, or to finally unburden himself of the one thing he had been keeping from his new friend.

Perhaps telling could help, he reasoned. He hated having to be so reliant on the marble and watch, small objects that could easily be lost and which he didn’t fully understand. He’d searched all the books in Asgard for an explanation of the time-space magic he’d accidentally created so long ago, in hopes of one day surpassing it. He’d found nothing, and knew that the last two realms on his itinerary were too primitive to offer any help. The only recourse left to him was the library here in Vanaheim, but it was guarded even more closely than the one at home. For years, Loki had been trying, subtly and intermittently, to ask Vifill for help sneaking in. But either Vifill did not or would not understand. Time was running out, and the only remaining approach was a direct one. 

Vifill must have read the hesitation on Loki’s face, and divined part of the truth for himself. “You _have_ met a mortal, haven’t you? But how? When? They never leave their realm, and you have never been there.”

“It is a great secret.” 

“You know I can be trusted.”

“All right. At home, I had the means of traveling between the realms, and I think, through time.”

“What?” Vifill scrambled backwards, terrified. “You lie. Such a thing is impossible.”

Loki grimaced. He had never outgrown his hatred of being accused of lies he was not telling. “I am not lying. I mastered it from a young age, I tell you. I’ve done it, oh, countless times. I have traveled to Midgard. And… and other places,” he added, remembering, with a shiver, the man in the tank, who, even after centuries, continued to haunt his nightmares. Loki still did not know what realm that had been, but he hoped he would never again find himself there.

“Unauthorized travel between realms—especially to closed-off realms such as Midgard—is strictly prohibited. And time? That is so unheard of that there aren’t even laws against it. But if it were, I’m sure they would be even stricter. Oh, I wish you had never told me.”

“You said you could be trusted.”

“I can, but…”

“Since when do you care about the rules?” Loki did not like to be chided, and Vifill’s dismay was making him nervous. It had been so long since Loki had gone there that the naughtiness of the act had worn off; he did not like being reminded of it. It _was_ a highly illegal action. Even beyond leaving one’s realm without permission, the mortals in particular were to be left alone, for their own good. “Think of the pranks you and I have accomplished together. Pranks for which you yourself suggested illegal flourishes. Think of all the things we have done together of which no one would have approved, but at which we have laughed heartily.”

“This is different. This is no mere mischief. This is serious.”

“I thought you were my friend, not my father.”

“How, Loki? How have you been doing it?”

“That is what I need your help to understand. It was something of an accident that kept happening.”

“You wouldn’t need to understand it if you stopped. The forces you must be accessing are too powerful. No one, not even one of your talents can hope to control them. Such magic never ends well for the caster. The universe always has a plan that not even we—elves and Aesir—can outwit. You’ve read enough to know that.”

“I will not stop. In fact, stopping is the opposite that is my goal. I have been working for some time now on an ambitious project, one that I intend to see to completion. As a first step, to make someone into something better, something stronger and hardier and invincible and perfect—the greatest, most ideal specimen of one’s species that could ever exist—”

“The Lifeline Formula?” Vifill asked. “Is that what you mean?”

Loki nodded.

“But that is a legend. It doesn’t exist. Or if it did, it has been lost to time.”

“That is what my father wants everyone to think. But he has it in his most secret vault. I broke in and copied the inscription. I already have most of the ingredients.”

“This is madness, Loki,” Vifill said, shaking his head. “If you are caught, not even you would be exempt from the severest punishments. What is it that drives you to such lengths and dangers? What need have you for the Lifeline Formula? Is it to best Thor? Is that it? Or is there someone else, someone to whom you are attached, whom you want to…” His eyes widened. “Those strange portraits you have. Is it…”

Pleased as he was to recognize the jealousy on Vifill’s face, Loki could see that revealing any more of the truth would make him less likely to help, not more. Vifill might help Loki show himself to greater advantage in a comparison to Thor, but, as was quickly—and rather delightfully—becoming clear, he would probably not help for Bucky’s sake. 

“Your first guess was correct,” Loki said, but what started as a lie meant solely to distract Vifill from the truth began to make more and more sense as he continued—not as the _only_ truth, but as another one that could live alongside it, a happy secondary benefit. He quickly thought of a way to tie this tale to older lies. “Finding a way to improve my standing for the throne is my goal. But I will need a test subject once I complete the work. A mortal would be ideal. They are so fragile and inconsequential, as you say. That fellow served me well when I was experimenting with the portrait-making spells, and he would serve again for this. If not him, then another. It matters little. But continued access to Midgard is why I must continue to travel between the realms. I need your help to learn how to do it whenever I please, without being limited to the accidental mechanism I have used in the past. Additionally, there are complicated steps in the process of making the potion that call for knowledge I could not find in Asgard. I believe the answers lie in the library here.”

Vifill remained quiet and afraid for a minute as he took all this in. “You never told me of this before.”

“I’ve never told _anyone_. Be grateful that I chose to share this with you at all,” Loki said haughtily, and with the glance he always used to remind people of their place. 

“Yes, Loki,” Vifill said hollowly, as he did whenever he realized he had overstepped. 

“So, will you help me?” 

Vifill pouted, but eventually nodded his agreement.

“It will have to be very late at night, when my uncle and everyone are asleep,” he said.

Loki shook his head. “No, I’ve found that such acts are most successfully committed in broad daylight. If caught, explanations are easier to invent. Now, let us plan.”

* * *

Instead of merely introducing them for a few weeks and returning to Asgard, as she had done on all the other legs of the journey, Frigga announced that she would remain with her sons for the entirety of their stay in Jotunheim. 

“Why are you making such an exception, Mother?” Thor asked as everyone took their places in the Bifrost, readying themselves for the transport. 

“I merely want to ensure your well-being.”

“I doubt even they mean to murder us in our beds,” Loki replied. “Asgard would wipe their realm from existence if either of us were harmed.”

“There are dangers beyond overt aggression,” Frigga replied, looking away. 

Utgard, the capital and stronghold of Jotunheim, was just as stark and barren as Loki had always read. There was no courtly elegance, no aesthetically pleasing entertainment, nothing that appealed to his usual interests at all. Instead, there were cacophonous tournaments and messy feasts, held in barren halls made of ice and crudest stone. The people were just as large and fearsome as he had always been told, and their manners much more blunt than those to which he was accustomed and amongst which he excelled. 

Loki and Thor were largely bored, but with their mother around to watch their behavior, they put on their most gracious faces. In the privacy of their rooms, however, they complained about every single thing about every single day.

And yet…

He was too ashamed to admit it, but, for the first time in longer than he could remember, Loki felt almost well. Except for certain Midgardian dishes, nothing had ever quite agreed with him before; however, here, he felt constantly ravenous. He was too embarrassed to let any of the Asgardian diplomats to see him so heartily enjoying anything in this realm, so he repressed his need during mealtimes and requested extra food to be delivered to his room after hours. Plates of meat and root vegetables came to him just before bedtime and were removed, at his insistence, just before dawn.

He only wished he had felt this well when he’d been in one of the better realms. There was little point in having more energy to enjoy himself when there was nothing to enjoy.

About a year into their stay in one of the royal family’s country houses, their hosts put on a magical feast for the Asgardians’ pleasure. 

“I did not know there was magic here,” Loki whispered, mostly to himself.

“There is much you Aesir have failed to learn about us,” one of the hosts said. “The greatest of the Jotun—the most revered and idealized of our entire realm—are not necessarily the largest, nor the strongest. Nay, the greatest of us are sorcerers.”

“Interesting,” Loki said. “Let us see what magic these sorcerers of yours can perform.”

But although his interest was the most piqued it had been so far here, he barely saw anything. He could smell a different type of magic in the air, like the scent of a poisonous flower. He felt drugged and dizzy, and could barely hold up his head. He didn’t realize he was shaking until he felt his mother’s arm under his elbow.

“What is the matter?” his mother whispered from her seat beside him. 

“I don't know. I have come all over strange,” he whispered back. “Not like my usual fits. Something else.”

“It is almost over,” she said, after glancing between him and the performance with growing alarm. “Leaving now will not cause too much offense. Let me tell Thor to stay and make our excuses. And then I will help you to your room.”

Within a few minutes, she was leading him down the long, empty corridors towards their wing of the fortress.

Loki felt stranger and stranger as he dragged himself along, and his head hurt too much to open his eyes. The odd pulsing under his skin grew more and more painful—stabbing hot and cold all at once. He let his mother lead him, blindly, inside his chambers. The last thing he heard before he lost consciousness was her stifled scream.

* * *

Loki felt that he had been plunged into endless nightmares full of screaming and pain and Frost Giants and men in tanks. When he finally woke, he was covered in sweat and his exhausted limbs were still thrashing in terror. His hair was stuck to his face, and his sodden bedclothes clung wetly to his back. Even though the rooms here were rather dark, the light was too bright to open his eyes. He flung his arm over his face to block it out. The ache as he moved was almost greater than the pain inflicted by the light.

“Loki? Are you awake?” his mother’s voice querulously asked.

He groaned in the affirmative. Even this nonverbal noise caused his dry and disused vocal chords to crack. There had been many times in the past when he had lain ill in his room, not speaking. But not even then had his throat felt this dry and out of practice. 

“For how long have I been unconscious?” he asked. 

“It has been over a month.”

 _”What?”_ he croaked.

“I think it is over now. The fever broke last night, and you stopped… You stopped.”

“Stopped what?” Loki tried to shift himself up onto his elbow so he could lie on his side, but found that he couldn’t. Everything hurt. He felt peculiar, different. Like he no longer knew how to move his body. When he tried a second time to rouse himself, his mother pressed firmly on his chest to keep him down.

“Rest, my son. It is too soon to exert yourself.”

“What happened? What was wrong with me?” he asked, though he doubted he’d get any answer. There had never been an answer for his illnesses. “Have I caught some damnable Jotun disease?”

Even though his arm was over his eyes, he could hear his mother choke a bit, probably on something she was drinking.

“No. Quite the opposite,” she said. “I’m not sure what happened, darling, but I think you are better—truly better. In more ways than one.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You are… I would wager that you are now as tall as your brother.”

“As tall…” Loki finally peeked under his forearm and gazed down the length of himself, where he lay naked underneath the coverlets. Yes, indeed, the view covered a much longer distance than usual. He saw now that the ache he felt all over was not that of his usual sickness; it was the result of a stretch.

“You’re saying that, while unconscious for a month, I have grown almost a foot?”

“Yes.”

“How is that possible?”

“We all mature at our own rates, Loki. Your process simply happened over a more concentrated period of time than other people’s, I suppose.”

“I…” It was a rare occasion when words failed him, but they did so now. 

“Thor has been fretting himself into madness about you. I refused to let him or anyone else see you.”

“Why not?”

“I did not know what the malady was. If it had indeed been a Jotun disease, I did not want Thor or any of our company to catch it from you.”

“Where is he?”

“He has been practicing diplomacy while you and I have sequestered ourselves here.”

Loki laughed weakly. “I fear imminent war if the peace of the realms has been left in his hands.”

“He isn’t as hopeless as you like to pretend, Loki.”

“But almost.”

“This has been the longest you’ve ever been apart, he told me a few nights ago. He misses you terribly.”

Loki had been unconscious for all of that time, so he could not honestly say the same. “He misses having someone around to get him out of scrapes,” he joked, though not entirely.

“More than that. I wish you could see it.”

From below the sheet, Loki shrugged, and then winced in pain from the motion, as though he were being punished for his reluctance to give into sentiment.

He finally felt brave enough to uncover his eyes properly. He looked at his mother and saw the toll that caring for him all this time had taken on her. She looked worn and, oddly, frightened. 

“This has been too much for you alone. Why didn’t you ask for help?”

“Because… Because…” She faltered, and Loki felt guilty for pushing her, since her hesitation must have come from exhaustion. “Because I did not trust them to help,” she finished flatly. 

“Only reasonable, given where we are.” Loki reached out to take her hand, but he missed, and got her elbow instead.

Beneath the thin silk of her sleeves, Loki’s fingers felt hard scabs. She tried to release herself from his grasp, but he held on and pushed the fabric up to reveal the skin. He found a series of horrible burns all along her forearms, more like frostbite than the burn of fire. Pushing up the other sleeve, he found the same.

“What happened to you?”

“It is nothing.”

“Did one of those monsters touch you?

“It was merely an accident.”

“But you are hurt! Who? Who was it? Who did this to you?”

“The harm was unintentional, a mere accident. It was my own fault for failing to be careful. And they are not monsters, Loki. They are no more monsters than you or I are. You must never forget that. Promise me. Promise me that you will never look down on any of the residents of the other realms or consider them monsters.”

“Even the Frost Giants?”

“Especially the Frost Giants.”

He paused, because the conversation reminded him of something else that had plagued him for ages, always at the back of his mind. “What about the humans?”

“While we of Asgard have had cause to fight the Frost Giants, the humans have done even less to warrant scorn. They are sentient creatures of the universe, just like you and me. They are for us to protect and befriend, and possibly, though we have not yet had cause, to learn from.”

He doubted she would say the same if she knew the whole truth, but this was what Loki had always wanted to believe. He decided to adopt his mother’s words in this matter. But he would never love the Frost Giants. 

The conversation had taxed Loki’s barely-there reserves of strength, and he fell silent again. His mother fed him water and broth and let him doze off into a peaceful nap—his first sleep free of nightmares in a month. She was still there when he woke again. He lay quietly while she told him about everything he had missed while ill. The information was mostly hearsay she had gotten from Thor and the rest of the delegation during the brief minutes she’d snatched outside of his sick room.

When she was done, she fell into a brief silence and then asked, “Loki?”

“Yes, mother.”

“Who is Bucky?”

Loki was lucky his recent fidgets had left his head momentarily turned towards the wall, because otherwise, she probably would have seen the alarm flash across his face. As it was, he was able to reply without having to look at her, and any hesitation in his voice could be attributed to his weakened state.

“Why do you ask?”

“While you were ill, you called for us often—for me, for your brother, sometimes for your father. But a few times you called for someone else, with equal desperation. But I have never heard of someone with such a name.”

Of all the people in his life, Loki’s mother was the most difficult to fool. Whatever he told her, he would have to at least partially believe himself, if there was to be any hope of making her believe it, too. “I… when I was younger, I dreamed up a friend to play with, and a whole play world to go with him. I was… I was quite attached to it all.”

“You never mentioned this.”

“And be told to let go of such silly, childish diversions? I have more sense than that.”

“I would not have told you to stop.”

“I was not speaking of you,” Loki said bitterly, thinking of Father’s endless lectures on growing up.

“If it is what you needed at the time, then it is what you needed. Do you still? Do you still indulge in this play world of yours? The urgency with which you called for this imaginary friend suggested continued relevance, more present in your mind than a discarded childhood game. You can tell me the truth, Loki. I will not scold.”

“I have not escaped into this place since leaving home. But…” He could not think of how to continue without verging into falsehoods that she would certainly see through. 

“I know what your father would say, but in this matter, you should listen to me instead. If you still need your play world and your imaginary friend, you should feel no shame in it. We should not abandon that which makes us happy solely because it’s time to grow up. Do you know, I still have dolls from my youth?”

“They must be very old and battered.”

“I have kept them preserved through magic. Luckily, your refuge is in your mind, and needs no such spells. It will never age nor die nor become lost.” And then, misreading Loki’s frustrated grimace (because she could not have been more wrong) as one of physical pain, she asked, “Are you all right?”

They heard a loud thumping on the door that reverberated straight into Loki’s brain.

“That would be your brother.” Frigga sighed as she stood to open it. “While you were napping, I told him you were feeling better. I assume his patience has run out.”

Thor was on Loki in an instant, bounding into his bed and on top of him as he had almost every morning, long ago when they were children.

“Be careful!” their mother scolded. “He still needs rest.”

“I scarcely believed it, but it’s true. You are like a snake, all skinny and long!” Thor exclaimed, palming his way down Loki’s limbs with wonder in his eyes. “Now your face is quite literally long, not only metaphorically.”

“With compliments such as these, it is a good thing you have your looks to recommend you, brother,” Loki joked, but he squeezed Thor’s arm fondly.

“I always suspected, but now it is confirmed. You are indeed the most dramatic person in the entirety of the Nine Realms, Loki. You can’t even _grow_ peacefully, like normal people. You must do it in the most outlandishly extravagant fashion possible.”

“We all have our talents, I suppose.”

* * *

Loki hid himself away for a few days, not because he still felt ill—in fact, he’d never felt so well—but because he couldn’t bear for anyone but his mother and brother to see him shambling about like a clumsy toddler. He would overreach for things, not accustomed to the length of his arms. Or he would trip over feet that went places he misjudged. He really did have the worst luck, he thought to himself. Thor had never had to deal with such embarrassment, having grown at an imperceptibly slow and manageable rate, like everyone else. 

Once he was feeling master of himself enough to travel to the next stage of their Jotunheim exploration, Loki found that he was hungry for more than the food that he continued to have secretly brought to him after hours. He found himself staring at his mother’s handmaiden—finding her unfathomably interesting in a way he never had before, even though he’d known her for ages. He shivered all over when one of his own serving men accidentally brushed his arm while helping him into his robe after a bath, and was shocked to feel himself physically responding to such a quotidian occurrence.

He knew things were dire when he felt his tongue growing thick and heavy in his mouth as he watched two of the less hideous Jotun spar for his and Thor’s entertainment. 

What was wrong with him? 

“I see you, you know,” Thor whispered lasciviously into his ear one night when Loki had absent-mindedly been following various attractive members of the delegation around the room with a heated gaze. “You cannot mock anymore. You are down in the muck with the rest of us.”

“I can keep it in check, at least.”

“Your eyes are doing a rather poor job of it, brother.”

Loki decided to stare solely at his cuffs, and wiped away some dust that wasn’t there.

“I know what you need, Loki.”

“And what is that?”

“There’s nothing to help here. But just wait until we get to Midgard. There is no itinerary at all, I have learned, since there are no ambassadors to Asgard who could have planned it. It is one last hurrah before we return home, with no responsibilities nor need for decorum. We can do as we please.” He leaned in closer and lowered his voice further. “I have never seen a human, but some are said to be very comely.” 

“Eight realms, and never once did you care to investigate the itinerary yourself. But now, on the last one, when there is nothing to do except, as you imply, satisfy your basest urges… Now is when you express interest in the details.”

“We’ll get you sorted yet, Loki,” Thor said. “And without fear of consequences or reprimand, nor need for the sort of discretion I have always needed to practice elsewhere.”

“You have hardly even been discreet, Thor,” Loki said, unconsciously returning his eyes to his brother’s page. He knew that he wanted, and he had some idea of _what_ he wanted (he’d listened to enough of Thor’s and Bucky’s exploits not to), but even if he’d had the courage to approach him, he had no idea what he would say or do. The horror of making his desires known to anyone, and the accompanying fear of rejection, kept him silent and frustrated. Worse, he knew that no one would approach him, not only because of his rank, but also because no one was interested.

“You deflect, brother,” Thor said, “but I can see in the tremble of your fingers that the prospect entices you. Leave it all to me. I will find you someone beautiful and eager. You will not need to exert yourself at all.”

Well, Loki thought to himself, for all of Thor’s irresponsibility and foolishness, he did mean well.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something that did not fit at all. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Aesir, for certain, tall and strong, with long blond hair falling down in cascades over her low-cut jeweled green dress. She stared with large, dreamy blue eyes at Loki and Thor as they talked. She flickered in and out of sight, as though practicing an invisibility charm that she had only three-quarters mastered. 

But there were no other Aesir in Jotunheim except the ones with their group, and she certainly was not one of them. Neither had he ever encountered an Aesir woman who practiced such magic. 

“Thor,” Loki said calmly, hoping not to frighten her away by pointing, “don’t look immediately, but to your left, in that corner, do you see a woman?”

Thor swiveled in his chair without finesse. “No. Should I?”

Loki glanced again. She was gone.

“I suppose not,” he said.

Strange.

* * *

There was one member of the delegation who had once traveled to Midgard, but it seemed that his information was outdated, because he recognized little of their surroundings upon arrival. Their lack of preparation made no difference, though, because upon seeing a group of outlandishly dressed Asgardians descend from the sky, the local peasants immediately celebrated them and housed them in the highest style they could afford.

It took a day or so, but Loki came to the conclusion that this was Russia. The names were similar to the ones in Tolstoy novels, even though the surroundings were much more primitive than what he had read about in books. They must have been in a backwater indeed.

He wanted to get to New York, but knew that it was very far away, indeed. And not even he could think of a way to convince the group to take what would necessarily entail a long and unpleasant trip across the ocean—even if he could get them to the western coast of France to begin the journey—without giving away the reason for his wish to go there.

As a substitute, he did manage to convince them to make their way to another place he knew. They embarked on a few years of travel—by horse, by sled, by foot, by boat across what Loki was certain was the Caspian Sea—first straight west to what might have been Scandinavia, and then south through what might have been Poland and Austria. All of it was a bit less primitive as the Asgardians had always said, but not even a little bit as advanced as Loki had always known.

It should not have taken them quite so long to reach Venice, but Loki could not be seen to be too intent upon a specific destination. Additionally, Thor followed every diversion that came along, whether it was a heroic quest to help a pretty maiden, or a battle that he haphazardly decided to enter. Loki had thought that his trick of duplicating money at need would be called for often here, but Thor’s happy manners charmed the worshipful mortals to the point where payment was rarely required for anything.

True to his word, Thor kept Loki and the rest of their traveling companions very busy, whether it was getting them invitations to festivals, or visiting brothels, or simply making merry in the tents of soldiers they happened to camp with. Everywhere they went, Thor found himself surrounded with more than attractive admirers than he knew what to do with. As promised, he always made a priority of sending Loki off with one of them—some nameless but attractive partner who seemed happy enough to take Loki as a consolation prize. It rankled, but they all seemed perfectly willing, and Loki was too shy to find his own, so he tried not to mind (he failed). The first few times terrified him, but he found that he didn’t need to know much or do much to satisfy his hunger and find his pleasure. And he never had to face the possibility of failing to provide the same for his partners, because by the next day, the delegation was always off again, and headed for the next town and adventure.

This trip to Midgard was nothing like any of his previous ones, but it offered more than enough enjoyment. He sometimes daydreamed about how he could incorporate some of these new, grown-up, rural pleasures in this realm into his old, childhood, urban ones.

* * *

Loki had maneuvered the group as close to his destination as he could, but he knew that he would have to travel the rest of the distance on his own. He left his previous night’s bedmate—a handsome stable boy with sand-coloured hair and freckles—at dawn. It didn’t take him long to find someone willing to rent him a horse. And then he was off. 

Bucky had told him that the US Army base he had lived near as a child lay between Venice and Trieste. Loki even remembered the town name. It took him only a few hours ride out of Venice and along the Adriatic coast to reach it. The little dirt road led him up the hills as opposed to along the coast, which was what Loki wanted. Once he reached the rocky cliffs, he tied his horse to a tree and began exploring the caves. The surrounding area and trees looked a little different from what he remembered, but it had only been that one time, and so long ago that Loki couldn’t confidently say what looked different.

He’d always wondered if the powers of the cave on the Asgardian side were linked to here, or if the magic had been trying to bring him to Bucky specifically without the location meaning anything. He hoped that by approaching it from this side, having arrived here through normal Bifrost travel, he could finally find out.

He looked in every single cave, going so far as to sit down in all of them and perform spells that were supposed to reveal the presence of elemental magic. He tried cave after cave—even the ones he was certain were not the one he had emerged from—to be sure. But nothing happened. Either the spells failed him or the answer was indeed that Bucky himself had been the destination. But, fond as he was of Bucky, he was under no illusion that there was anything special about him. His centuries-long voyage throughout the entire universe, meeting objectively important and powerful people, had only solidified that fact. Why would such powerful magic have chosen that boy among all others?

Satisfied that he had tried everything he could, Loki went outside again and sat down on the grass. He spent a few peaceful minutes of silence simply looking down at the fondly remembered town—smaller than he had expected, but then again, what idealized memory from childhood didn’t seem smaller and less significant to his now-adult eyes? 

A noise broke his blissful silence. He looked up and saw someone standing in the distance. He squinted a bit and was surprised to recognize the beautiful woman he had spied in Jotunheim. Just as she’d been the last time, she wore a long green dress that didn’t fit in at all here in Italy.

“Hello?” he shouted. 

She turned to face him and smiled alluringly. Loki felt himself getting up and his feet walking even before he had willed them to move. The partners Thor procured for him were perfectly desirable, but never before had he felt such heat. He felt drunk looking at her, just as drunk as he had the last time, although today he had imbibed no spirits.

“Who are you?” he asked. He kept his distance in order not to scare her off. He remembered how skittish she had been the last time, and how quickly she had disappeared. “How is it that I have seen you both here and in other realms? For I am certain that you of Asgard.”

“If that is what you think,” she called, and the wind carried her soft voice farther than it should have gone, all the way to Loki’s ears, “then seek me in Asgard. By the Norns…”

This was a common phrase, but it usually preceded some emphatically felt statement. However, instead of continuing, she vanished, leaving Loki frustrated and dizzy, as though he’d just woken up from a fitful nap.

“Loki!” a new voice called out. 

Loki shook the drunkenness out of his head. He saw Thor approaching him on a horse that was entirely too small for him.

“You have given me quite a tiresome day, brother. I have sought you throughout the countryside. Happily, your visage and mien were unique enough that the peasants I met remembered seeing you, and pointed which way I should follow. What are you doing here? What possessed you to ride off like that, without any warning?”

“I simply wanted to have a moment to myself. That is all.”

“This is farther afield than you usually go for one of your sulks.”

“I am not sulking,” Loki said, but while the journey here had not been motivated by sulkiness, it was what he now felt about the departure of the strange but lovely woman. The mystery of it all captivated him even more than her looks. 

Thor had dismounted and now came to sit beside his brother. “What directed you here in particular?”

“Nothing,” Loki lied. “I simply followed my fancy and found myself here.”

“Well,” Thor said, looking out at the landscape, “you couldn’t have picked a more idyllic spot.”

“No, I couldn’t have,” Loki said, knowing full well how true this was. He had seen much of this world, both during this trip, as well as in pictures or films. This was certainly the prettiest place he had ever seen, but how much of that was objective fact, and how much was due to it being the cradle of his most treasured memories—the entrance to this whole other life he had so much enjoyed and would soon be able to return to—he could not say. Annoyed as he was by Thor's intrusion, he did appreciate having an outside perspective confirm that his impressions were not clouded by sentiment.

“You try to hide it, but you like this realm, don’t you, Loki? I know you.”

“It isn’t the worst realm,” Loki said, as lightly as he could.

* * *

Finally back at home, Loki fought back a sense of apprehension as pushed open the door to his suite. 

The evening shadows, whose effects on the jeweled mosaics he had long ago enjoyed watching, were beginning their slanting dance along the walls of his receiving room. He peered into his private reading room to find the shadows continued. Everything was as usual. Passing through the little hallway that led on one side to the bathing chamber and on the other to his clothing alcove, he proceeded to the bedroom. As with the previous rooms, everything sat exactly where he had left it so long ago. 

(But then again, he had never been one to leave things lying about.)

Nothing had changed, but perhaps because of the new angle afforded by his recently acquired height, nothing looked the same. He sat on his bed and frowned. They must have replaced his soft, almost liquid mattress with a newer one. 

The discovery of at least one invisible difference comforted him; he was not the only thing in here that had changed.

The maids had drawn him a bath, but Loki had little time to enjoy it. He and Thor had been hurried off to their rooms, told to ready themselves as quickly as possible. The feast celebrating their return was soon to begin. Already, he could smell the bonfire and roasting game.

Mother must have informed the tailors of his growth spurt, because there were a number of new items hanging on racks, including the ceremonial green and black armour and golden helmet that he was to unveil tonight. 

First things first, though. 

Naked and dripping from his bath, Loki searched the hidden pockets of his travel trunks for his treasures. 

Long ago, before he’d had many treasures at all, he’d removed the window seat in his bedroom and dug out the wall underneath it. He’d filled it with a safe that he’d transported, with great effort and secrecy, from a hardware store on Flatbush Avenue all the way back to his bedroom. 

Today, he gingerly removed the layers of cushion and custom-fitted false seat he’d made, and opened the Master combination lock. He piled the objects he had accumulated for the Lifeline Formula on top of the crumpled envelope with Bucky’s letter and the little jewel bag containing the marble.

He was still reassembling the window seat when he heard Thor’s voice through the closed door.

“Come along, Loki!” 

“Stay where you are!” Loki called in panic. “I’m not yet dressed.”

“When has there ever been modesty between us?” Thor’s footsteps drew closer and his hand began to rattle the handle.

“If you come in here now, I will dye your beard green, I swear it.”

Loki readied his magic to create an illusion that would hide what he was doing, but thankfully, Thor stomped on the other side of the door, but didn't actually make a move to barge in.

“Very well,” Thor said. “But hurry up. I want to show you my new armour, and I want to see yours.” And then, after a happy sigh, he added, “It is good to be home, is it not?”

Loki hadn’t yet decided, so he pretended not to have heard the question, and instead focused on getting dressed.


	11. Chapter 11

Loki had been away for so long, and even before that, he’d been too busy preparing to go away to think about what would happen after his return.

Apparently, the answer was nothing, although it took him some time to figure it out.

He and Thor were adults now, he gleaned, though no one ever sat them down to tell them what that meant. No more tutors or practice sessions or curfews. No more structure of any sort.

Thor, of course, took to their new lifestyle effortlessly. He idled the days away, making merry and sparring with his friends, stopping only for the odd court-mandated responsibility. But such a lack of structure did not suit Loki’s temperament, and resulted in nothing but a sense of frittering his life away. And yet, he hesitated to impose upon himself a schedule and regimen like the one he had once enjoyed. He was within his rights to order for himself more lessons, but he feared that such a move might look like a return to childhood, like a step backwards.

Although he was bored and lonely, he didn’t want to immediately run away to New York, not until he’d settled back into life here. New York had always been a treat, like dessert, and Loki’s mother had taught him that dessert without dinner was never as satisfying. For whatever reason, he had latched onto this nugget at a young age and had always been rather smug about how it demonstrated his mature self-discipline, even as Thor and his friends gobbled up sweet treats whenever they could get them. 

But if he was honest with himself, it wasn’t only Frigga’s advice that made him hesitate. 

Through various speeches and over myriad occasions, Loki’s father had made it very clear that with his sons’ new status came higher expectations. They were to comport themselves as heirs to Asgard, not as children. The marble that Loki spent hours staring at but not touching held a powerful enchantment, yes, but the enchantment took the form of a child’s toy. No matter what his mother had said in Jotunheim, doubt sometimes crept into Loki’s mind about the continued viability and appropriateness of the entire arrangement. Should he listen to his mother and continue to indulge in his favorite escape, or should he listen to his father and put childhood things away?

He knew what the answer would eventually be, of course. Proof of his intentions lay in the way he pored over his books and taught himself the complicated processes that were involved in making the potion. But each year that passed was only a few days more for Bucky. This slight delay while he tried to find his footing in Asgard hardly mattered, not after how long he’d already been away. And the strange, dark part of him that enjoyed pain—the part that Bucky had always managed to silence or logic away—relished this self-inflicted ache. 

In the meanwhile, between his studies and his jealously at seeing Thor’s return to his other friends, Loki found himself obsessing over the woman who had appeared to him in both Jotunheim and Midgard. In fact, he’d felt rather feverish ever since their brief meeting in Italy. Whenever he thought about her, his head spun. For the first time, he thought he understood the all-consuming feeling the poets and novelists were always on about. But, just his luck, the object of his affection was a stranger—a figure of mystery whose name he did not even know. 

He remembered her words, what his hopes interpreted as an invitation. _“Seek me in Asgard… By the Norns…”_

“Are there any other sorcerers in Asgard?” he asked his mother. “Perhaps not in the capital city, but elsewhere in the realm.”

It was strange, he now realized, that the journey had covered all the corners of all the realms except his own.

“There is Karnilla, Queen of Nornheim, where the Norns, who govern all of our fates and who tend the faraway roots of the World Tree, live.” 

“What is she like?” Loki asked, as quietly as he could, trying to muffle his excitement so that Frigga wouldn’t notice.

“Very powerful. She guards the Norns so that they may continue their work.”

“For how long has she been queen?” Loki asked, wondering if she was his mystery lady, or if he sought someone in her court.

“For quite some time.”

That meant little. Loki tried again. “Is she a queen like you, established and wise, or is she newly crowned?”

Loki’s mother raised an eyebrow. “Young men your age do not ask such questions without reason. Nor do they flatter their mothers so unless they wish to gain something. Your wiles are weak today, my son. Are you seeking a mate among the minor royalty? Is that why you are asking? It is a little early for any of that, too early to lose you, although I know the day is coming.”

Loki looked at the ground, knowing he’d been caught. “I suppose I did wonder what a minor queen of Asgard looked like,” he mumbled, trying to salvage the situation.

“She is about my age. And her court is very small, almost too small to be considered a court. She has but a few ladies in waiting, who, I believe, serve as her apprentices.”

“You don’t seem to know much about them,” Loki noted. His mind was racing. An apprentice. That might be the answer. There was no other way she could have appeared in multiple realms without access to magic—magic that he wished to learn. What could he not accomplish with someone whose skills and knowledge so perfectly complemented his own? (Though, to be honest, he was thinking more of her looks than her skills.)

“We met when I was a young girl, but I’ve had little reason or desire to return,” his mother continued. “Nornheim is far from here, and Karnilla is not of a disposition for socializing. If your question is prompted by a wish to learn from her, I will tell you now that nothing will come of it. She chooses her apprentices carefully, and is unlikely to take any interest in my children. We are not of what you would call compatible temperaments.”

She must be a hard lady, Loki thought, not to get along with Mother. Everyone loved Frigga.

“Still,” he said, “perhaps it is time she had a visit. She cannot be allowed to grow complacent and perceive herself unmonitored. That is how insurrection brews.”

“I do not think Karnilla is plotting a revolution, Loki. She does her job and takes it seriously, even if she and I are not friends. But if you would like to make a diplomatic visit and introduce yourself, you may. You are an adult now. You know how these things are arranged. See to it, if you wish, as a sort of practice. If you need any guidance, or even company, you need only ask me.”

“I’m sure I can manage it on my own.”

“Very well. But I have only just gotten you and your brother back and am not ready to see you run off again so soon. And there are quite a few responsibilities here in the city that will require your presence in the foreseeable future.”

“I understand. But once they are completed, I will set off.”

* * *

It took little more than an extra-frustrating day to dissolve Loki’s resolve about waiting to visit New York. Looking back weeks later, he couldn’t even pinpoint which exact petty occurrence had proven too much. Whatever it was, he found himself in the same kind of stormy mood that had driven him to the island in the first place. He dug around in his safe for the marble.

But unlike the first time, there was no immediate gratification, no instant infusion of adventure and friendly comfort to cheer him up. Months went by without the reassuring glow that meant Bucky was there, on the other side of this magic, answering Loki’s call for a visit. He knew that hardly a day had passed for Bucky since he’d sent the signal. It was unreasonable to expect Bucky to check the watch every few hours after so long an absence, but Loki was not accustomed to this kind of uncertainty. He kicked himself for failing to put a plan in place before leaving.

As years went by, he grew even more disgruntled and no one around him was spared his distemper. His tongue lashed out at every opportunity, and his pranks grew more mean-spirited. Mother continuously asked him what was wrong. Father warned him about sulking. Even Thor’s long patience began to fray.

Though no one knew the reason, everyone in the palace became happier when, _finally_ , it glowed.

* * *

During Loki’s time away from Asgard, many of the boats in the marina had fallen into disrepair and been replaced. He now had enough pocket money to purchase one for himself and rent a space for it. He disguised himself while making the purchase and setting off; it wouldn’t do for anyone to see where he was going. When he reached the cave, he cast a glamour that clad him in the fashions he had worn long ago. His heart pounded as he rubbed the glowing marble and saw the faint light of the portal appear.

Loki had become accustomed to Bifrost travel, which was infinitely more dramatic than the silent step and shimmer of this magic. He stilled as soon as he found himself standing in a bedroom. 

Bucky sat on the bed in that Midgardian cross-legged position Loki had never found comfortable. He stared down at the watch in his fidgeting hands. His dark, wavy bangs flopped over his face. He wore a suit, complete with tie—a get-up Loki had seen on adults, but never before on his friend—that had been loosened and rumpled. The hole in the big toe of his sock rendered the look a bit more in character.

Although only Bucky’s profile was visible from this angle, Loki could see that the baby fat had melted away, revealing sharp cheekbones. His limbs filled out the suit jacket and dress pants better than they would have done before. The shadow of stubble darkened the previously clear skin of his face. But otherwise, Bucky looked much the same. The weak, dimpled chin had not become any more defined, and his eyebrows unfortunately continued to try to make up for it. 

He was altogether a sight for sore eyes.

Loki rapped on the wooden bureau beside him to announce his presence. 

“Hey,” he said. The greeting syllable rolled awkwardly off his tongue after so many years of disuse.

Bucky looked up and flung his hair out of his face. Loki had always been immune to Bucky’s apparently irresistible physical appeal. However, perhaps more powerfully, he had long, long ago fallen under Bucky’s personal spell. That smile had not lost its powers of relaxation in the years since it had first cheered Loki up, back when they were small.

“Loki?” Bucky asked stupidly, awestruck, as he scrambled off the bed.

“Were you expecting someone else?”

Loki wasn’t accustomed to looking down at him. Bucky, similarly, wasn’t used to looking up. He looked up, and down, and then up again, his tongue peeking out from between his lips for a second before quickly retreating again, along with half of his bottom lip. 

It took Bucky a few more seconds of staring before he choked out, “You’re… taller.”

“It was about time I grew, don’t you think?” 

“Yeah, but… Wow.”

Loki frowned, taking in how hesitantly and stiffly Bucky was standing, and the distance he was keeping between them. “You yourself summoned me,” he complained, “but you don’t seem too pleased to see me.”

“Yeah, no. I mean, of course I am. I’m just…” Bucky blinked a few times and ran his fingers through his hair, pulling at the ends the way he always had when thinking hard or feeling ill at ease. “You look really different.”

“Not unfortunately so, I hope.”

“No. No, I wouldn’t say that. Wouldn’t say that at all.” 

They stared at one another for another minute. Bucky had never been this dumb. Loki had never felt this uneasy around him.

Perhaps coming today had been a mistake. Perhaps he should have listened to the frightened part of him that had whispered to let all this go, to leave it forever behind in the hallowed halls of childhood.

Loki looked around him, casting about for something to say.

“This is the same room I last saw you in,” he noted. Bucky’s grand-aunt’s townhouse in Brooklyn Heights.

“Yeah, I’ve been living here for awhile now.”

“Why?”

“My Ma met someone. Got remarried. They moved to Connecticut. Becca got married, too. I didn’t want to horn in on any newlyweds, and I got the feeling I wasn’t really…” He frowned. “Anyway, I wanted to stay in Brooklyn, near Steve. And my girlfriend. Aunt Helen said I could stay here awhile, until I save up and start making enough to get my own place.”

“That will be difficult. It was my understanding that your afterschool jobs could barely support our afternoons, let alone a whole life.”

Bucky squinted at him. “I don’t go to school anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I’m twenty years old. I graduated awhile ago. I work now. I’m… I’m a grown-up. Or, I’m supposed to be, even though I don’t feel like it most days.”

Loki knew what that was like, but even that bit of empathy couldn’t undo the disorientation he felt. Even though he knew better, a small part of him still thought of this place as his own little world, created by his own magic for his own amusement. Life here wasn’t supposed to move on and change in his absence. _Bucky_ wasn’t supposed to change.

“What’s wrong?” Bucky asked, breaking Loki’s downcast focus.

“Nothing. I didn’t expect so much upheaval in your situation, that’s all.”

“Well.” Bucky shrugged. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? Four years. You said you’d be gone for two-and-a-half.”

“The itinerary was not, in practice, nearly as firm as I had been led to believe,” Loki explained. “Certain portions were extended, and others cut, depending on…”

“It’s all right. I get it. Figured that’s what happened.”

There was something not exactly bitter, but neither easy-going about Bucky’s statement. Loki didn’t know how to interpret the tone.

“Where’d you get those clothes?” Bucky asked next, jutting his chin Loki’s direction. “You’re too big now to fit in anything you used to have. Have you been coming here and…”

“No, this is but a glamour, an illusion I cast in case we were meeting somewhere more public. I suppose I can remove it, as we are alone.”

Loki released the mental tension he had been holding. The true length of his hair was restored and the American togs shimmered away.

Bucky took a step back when the shimmering began, startled at the new magic. Loki had missed this—had missed Bucky’s unfailing appreciation for each new skill he mastered. 

A second after the transformation finished, however, Bucky burst into laughter. 

Loki frowned. He’d forgotten that hand in hand with the gratifying awe went this aggravating derision.

“What is so funny?”

“What the hell is this get-up?” 

After centuries of being guest of honour around the universe, Loki was not accustomed to such a reaction. He drew himself to his fullest (and now actually imposing) height. With the tone that had put everyone across the realms in their place, he said, “This is ceremonial armour signifying that I am of age. That I, too, am a grown-up—not only that, but one of the heirs to Realm Eternal.” 

Bucky reached out to touch the horns of Loki’s helmet. “People take you seriously in this shit?”

“Extremely so.” It irked Loki that Bucky quite clearly did not. 

But much as he disliked being mocked, at least this mirth had shaken away some of Bucky’s awkwardness. As Bucky calmed down from the giggles, the old fond, interested look that Loki remembered so well returned to his face.

“Does Thor have one?”

“His ensemble is red, and his helmet has wings, but the general effect is similar.”

“You must look like a couple of loonies. What I wouldn’t give to see the pair of you.”

“That’s easily arranged,” Loki said, shifting into a perfect likeness of his brother, and creating an illusion of himself at his side.

This time, Bucky did not laugh. He tripped even farther backwards and went pale. 

“Stop it stop it stop it,” he gasped.

Loki let the illusions fade. “What is the matter? You used to like my tricks.”

“I didn’t know which one was you. I didn’t know which one was real.”

“Neither one was real.”

“Exactly.” Bucky shivered, and then his features settled into an expression of depression—an emotion Loki had almost never seen on him before.

This shifting strangeness of Bucky’s, and Loki’s inability to parse it, was exasperating.

“Hey, are you hungry?” Bucky said brightly, apropos of nothing. “Do you wanna get dinner?” 

It was a natural assumption. Loki had always been so hungry. Having recently supped at home, he wasn't particularly in need of a meal, but he supposed it was what Bucky expected, and it was something for them to do. 

“I wouldn't be averse to it,” Loki said slowly.

“The usual?”

Loki automatically opened his mouth to say yes, but then shut it again. So many of the things he had once liked at home now seemed different, lesser. He didn’t want to open himself to the same disappointment here. 

“No,” he said. “Take me somewhere you have discovered since I was last here. Somewhere new.”

“Sure thing,” Bucky said. 

“Do you still have the purse?”

“Yeah.” Bucky began rummaging deep in the back of his closet. “I haven't had a reason to get it out since I moved here. It's buried pretty deep.”

Watching Bucky dig reminded Loki of the other Asgardian gifts that must be hidden in here. He thought he could see the tips of the archery equipment wrapped in cloth at the back of the closet. 

“Have you been practicing your aim?” he asked in Asgardian, remembering how he had left Bucky with the tools to continue learning the language in his absence. 

“I haven’t had much chance, not since I started working,” Bucky replied haltingly, and much less fluently than Loki would have expected.

“Neither have you had time to study the language, I see. How long has it been since you practiced?”

“About a year,” Bucky said, switching back to English.

“Do you still have the books I gave you?”

Bucky emerged from the closet with the purse in hand. “Yeah, I’ve still got them.”

“Where?”

Bucky walked over to the bookshelf and ran his hand over a number of large books with titles such as “Tax Accounting for Medium-Sized Corporations” and “FIFO vs LIFO: A Comparison”. He handed one to Loki, who opened it to find the familiar language written inside.

“I found book covers that fit all of them. So boring, no one who comes in here will ever want to pick them up. Steve’s been here a thousand times and never once looked. Smart, huh?”

“It’s very clever, indeed. But you always were.”

“Thanks.” Bucky smiled up at him and then looked away, oddly. 

Loki created a new illusion for himself modeled on Bucky’s suit and haircut, but different enough not to be an obvious copy. They went downstairs and Bucky distracted Aunt Helen while Loki tiptoed behind her. She looked much more frail than Loki remembered from the one time he’d met her. It was disturbing to see the change that only six years had wrought to the old lady.

As they walked down the familiar blocks, Loki found that quite a few of the stores had changed hands. What had once been a tobacconist was now a milliner’s. His favorite café now had garish blue décor and a less appealing array of pastries in the window. He frowned to see these little differences between the memories he had cherished and the present reality. 

“This good?” Bucky asked, waving at an unfamiliar establishment on a quiet block on Baltic Street.

“If you like it, then yes.”

They wedged themselves into a booth near the back of the restaurant and peered at the chalkboard detailing the daily specials. Bucky kept glancing at Loki. He wasn’t nearly as stealthy about it as he thought.

“What is it?” Loki finally asked when they’d ordered.

“Nothing,” Bucky replied, looking rather red in the face. “Just can’t get over it. How you look now. It’s…” He cleared his throat. “So. Tell me. Tell me about your trip.”

Loki started slowly, first introducing the members in the delegation who would be recurring characters, and then going into an overview of the realms. He’d spent a lot of time thinking about what stories he wanted to share with Bucky—the most impressive, of course. He’d practiced and now told them as professionally as some of the most revered story-spinners in Asgard.

He had already begun to laugh at his own tale of humiliating Thor by dressing him as a bride to get his hammer back, but Bucky’s face stopped him. Far from amused, he looked as though he was about to be ill. This wasn’t the first of Loki’s anecdotes to which Bucky had reacted quietly but negatively.

“It was a good prank, and you were not the butt of it,” Loki said. “So why do you look as though you were?”

Bucky shrugged. “I dunno. I figure if you say you’re going to help someone, you should just help them. Don’t be a dick about it. I don’t see what Thor did to deserve being embarrassed like that.”

“It is considered a very good story at home.”

“I’ll bet,” Bucky said. “I guess I didn’t remember you being so mean about stuff. You always had it in you, but you were never like that around me.”

“Well, I was spared your moralizing influence while I was away. My other friend found the adventure extremely amusing. Instead of chastising, he actually helped.”

“Must be nice to have someone you can do magic with. Another prince, too. Somebody you can hang out with all the time.”

“Not entirely. He still lives in Vanaheim. It’s been some time since I last saw him, and his uncle will not be able to spare him immediately for a visit. He has expressed a desire to move to Asgard when his apprenticeship is finished.”

“That’s great. For you. I’m, uh, I’m glad you finally met someone you have stuff in common with.”

“Yes, so am I,” Loki said, wondering, for the hundredth time today what lay behind Bucky’s words. “And you?” he asked. “What news do you have for me?” He cast about for something he could ask, but it was difficult, as there was no obvious event or voyage for Bucky to talk about, and too much seemed to have changed about his day-to-day for Loki to know in what direction to make an inquiry.

“Not much. Just, uh, graduated, but I told you that already. Got a job at a real estate company. Family connection. I’ll be a broker—sales, you know—but they’ve got me doing some book-keeping and office work while I learn the ropes. I signed up to take classes in the evening some days, hoping to get my licenses.”

“Is it considered normal to assign yourself schoolwork, even as an adult?” Loki asked, thinking of his own desires and hesitations on this matter.

“Sure. Why not? The stuff’s good to know, and my bosses like that I can help them out with it. Maybe one day I’ll get enough credits for a real degree.”

“Interesting.” With this example before him, Loki resolved to do the same for himself, starting tomorrow. “What else?”

“Uhhh… Oh. The Dodgers got a new manager. Looks promising. Might actually turn the team around, maybe finally win a pennant.”

Loki received the news as blankly as he ever had on such topics. Bucky must have recognized the old, uninterested expression, because he chuckled.

“Right. Okay. Let’s see,” he said, thinking. “Well, Steve had a few rough winters, but he’s doing a little better now that it’s spring. He comes over a lot, and we help my aunt fix things around the house. He doesn’t have to. I mean, I tell him it’s my own keep I’m paying, but you know Steve. Won’t be told to sit down.”

Loki didn’t know Steve, and hadn’t had cause to think about him in ages. He still found it hard to care, but he supposed he had heard enough about him over the years to know this. 

“Another war started,” Bucky said next. “Nobody knows how long it’ll last.”

“I remember this. Germany’s new political party. The situation has escalated, I take it?”

“Yeah. But nobody thinks we’ll get caught up in it again. We’ve got our own problems.”

They stayed on similarly impersonal topics for awhile. General news items about the city and the world. Loki was not particularly interested, but the conversation flowed more easily than it had when they’d tried to be more personal.

The realization depressed him.

“What next?” Loki asked after they’d used the purse to pay the bill. He wasn’t accustomed to arriving here so late, and had little idea what Bucky did in the evenings these days.

“I should probably head home. You wanna walk with me? And then…”

It sounded like the prelude to a dismissal, but Loki was having an awkward enough time that he didn’t protest. If only he could discover the reason, he was certain he could salvage this. Something was weighing on Bucky—as terribly as all his secret work had weighed on him so many years ago. But Loki knew that when Bucky didn’t want to talk about something, there was no making him. He was the only person Loki had never been able to manipulate.

They’d only gone a few blocks when a voice called out, “Bucky? Hey!”

Striding towards them was a pale young woman with shoulder length, jet-black hair, starkly painted red lips, and a neatly tailored spring jacket that hugged every curve just so. She slipped her arm around Bucky’s waist. Going up on tiptoes, she crowded into his space and nuzzled in for a kiss. Loki had rarely glimpsed Bucky with any of his girlfriends; their friendship was too separate and secret for that. But he could tell this relationship was different. This woman treated Bucky with a benevolent ownership that not even Steve, in the couple of times Loki had watched him and Bucky interact, had ever exuded. 

Bucky, as though operating out of habit and instinct, immediately nuzzled back. Then, remembering this was not an ordinary occasion, he stiffened and took a step back. His movement was so sudden and so obviously outside their little ritual that the woman almost fell over at the sudden lack of balance. 

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“No—Nothing. Hey, Susan.”

Normally, Loki would have jumped in and saved Bucky from the awkwardness of the situation, but he was so put out by how the evening had gone that he decided to let Bucky sort it out himself. Susan hadn't realized they were together, so Loki kept walking, just a few more steps, and stopped at a combination newsstand and fruit seller. He regarded the wares while he listened to their conversation.

“You said you weren’t sure if you could go out tonight because your aunt was ill,” Susan said. “But here you are. Out.”

Loki had just seen Aunt Helen, and she was certainly not ill.

“Things got a little screwy. Sorry, I’ll make it up to you, I promise,” Bucky said with his most charming smile and easy manner.

Bucky was a very good liar when he chose to try, and only those who knew him as well as only Loki—and Steve—did could see through him. But this girl apparently knew him almost as well, for she cocked her head and pursed her lips.

“You’ve been acting weird for almost a week. What’s gotten into you?”

Well, at least this behavior was not who Bucky had become in general, and was not limited to Loki. A week, he thought to himself. Loki hadn’t had cause to do these calculations for some time, but he counted that this was exactly as long as it had been since he’d begun trying to contact Bucky again. 

“Just had some stuff on my mind,” Bucky mumbled. “It’s nothing important. I promise.”

Loki felt a flare of anger stir in his chest. Never mind that he’d told similarly dismissive lies to Vifill. Never mind that the need for lies had always been at his insistence. 

“If it’s nothing, you can come with me. I'm on my way to meet Jill and Ed. We can make it a double date.”

“Can’t, sorry.”

“Why not?”

“Took some work home that I have to finish for a big meeting in the morning. But I’ll see you tomorrow and we’ll do whatever you want. I swear.”

The lie was more convincingly delivered this time, and accompanied by a distracting and well-timed squeeze on the bottom. This seemed to appease her. Out of the corner of his eye, Loki watched as they kissed, long and passionately, in the middle of the street. As the kiss deepened, Bucky’s stiffness slowly dissolved; he must have been relaxing into his normal interactions with her, forgetting that they were not alone, forgetting that Loki was there. Loki felt some of the old annoyance welling up in him, though he didn’t know why. He had another friend now. He shouldn’t have felt as possessive about Bucky as he once had. And he certainly didn’t begrudge Bucky his pretty girlfriend, not when Loki had the lovely mystery lady constantly at the back of his mind, and not when he had Thor to find him an equally gorgeous partner or quality brothel whenever the itch struck.

There was no logical reason for it, but Loki still felt annoyed.

“You gonna buy something or what?” the proprietor of the newsstand said, dragging Loki’s attention away from the couple. “This ain’t the library.”

“I’d like some gum. It has been some time since I chewed any. And this copy of _National Geographic_ ,” Loki said. He’d always liked the photographs and articles, and looked forward to a new issue. Unfortunately, Bucky had the purse, so he had to wait until Susan went on her way before he could pay. “One moment, please.”

“You need your brother to buy you gum?” the proprietor asked when Bucky finally sidled up to him and handed him the coins.

Something about the assumption annoyed Loki even further, though he could not say why. As he walked away, Loki’s fingers clenched into position to cast a spell that would cause all of the man’s wares to spoil and stink. But before he could perform the motion, Bucky’s hand was on his.

“Leave it,” he said, as he’d always said in such moments. As they walked away he whispered, “Let me guess. The spoil and stink spell?”

Loki looked down at his trapped fingers. “How did you know…”

“I know you, Loki.” He smiled and then quickly released Loki’s hand, as though it had suddenly burned him.

“So…” Loki raised one very suggestive eyebrow as they walked.

“Shut up,” Bucky said, looking at the ground.

“But it _is_ rather serious, isn’t it?” Loki asked. “Your old dalliances never were. How long has this one been going on for?”

“A year, about. Well, we started going out before that, but that’s when it started to get serious.”

It was not lost on Loki that a year coincided with the cessation of Bucky’s studies of Asgardian.

“She’s the greatest. Everyone loves her just as much as I do. My mom, Becca, my step-dad, Aunt Helen. Even Steve thinks she’s the bee’s knees. And she loves him, too, which means even more. She doesn’t mind that I’m always with him, that I have to look out for him. She never gets jealous. She’s pretty much perfect. Everyone says we should get married.”

“And what do you say?”

“We’re… we’re too young for all that yet. I mean, I still don’t make enough to move out of my grand-aunt’s house. And… and… I know I’m lucky a girl like that would stick around until I’m more settled. Hell, I’m lucky she gives a guy like me the time of day. I know I should want to marry her. I mean, I _do_ want to, ‘course I do, or, at least, I was pretty sure I did until…” Bucky shook his head. “It’s too soon to talk about, okay? I’m just taking it one day at a time.”

Loki tried to keep his face still. He could feel himself doing such a bad job of it that he had to use magic to hide his reaction. The entire evening had given him glances into how much Bucky’s life had changed, but this was almost too much. The idea of Bucky belonging to someone else—to some stranger—who would either never know about Loki or, more probably, who would find out and either have to be incorporated into the arrangement (ugh) or demand its cessation. The idea that Bucky felt strongly enough about someone to be having this conversation at all… Loki couldn’t countenance it. He knew that he and Thor would one day probably have to think about these things as well, but…

“Well, she’s very beautiful,” he finally said, as lightly as he could. “Entirely too beautiful for the likes of you.”

“Hey!” Bucky exclaimed, in exactly the same tone he had always used when reacting to Loki’s teasing, and with exactly the same accompanying shoulder nudge. 

These intermittent glimpses of their old camaraderie gave Loki hope that whatever was wrong between them stemmed from a tangible cause that he could fix, and that they hadn’t merely drifted apart.

“I speak only the truth,” he said next, trying to sustain the jocular moment.

“Says the god of lies,” Bucky muttered under his breath, almost as though a thought had escaped the confines of his inner monologue, whispered so softly that human ears would not have heard it.

“What?” Loki asked, thinking for a moment that he’d misheard. 

However, Bucky’s immediate reaction proved that he had heard correctly. His eyebrows shot up. “Nothing.”

Loki narrowed his eyes. “What did you call me?”

“Nothing, doesn’t matter. I came up with it just now, as a joke, you know. Wasn’t very funny, I guess.”

“No, you didn’t. Tell me what you’re talking about.”

Bucky scanned Loki’s face. “You really don’t know?”

“These riddles are tiresome.”

Bucky hunched his shoulders. “I don’t know how this works. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“There may have been a long break, but we have been doing this for some time now. What is it that makes you so suddenly unsure? What troubles you?”

Bucky sighed. “Okay, come on. But I have to show you upstairs. Aunt Helen’s probably asleep by now, so it’ll be all right.”

Once safe in his room with the door shut, Bucky reached to the top shelf of his bookcase. Like the Asgardian ones, the book he pulled down was covered in something from a dull-sounding textbook. He handed it to Loki with shaking hands. 

“Read it,” he said.

“Now?”

“It won’t take you long to get the gist. But can you change back first? I don’t like looking at a fake you when I don’t need to.”

“Only if you promise not to laugh again.”

“Scout’s honor.”

“You were a deplorable scout, if I remember correctly. But all right.”

Loki sat on the edge of the bed and changed back. Bucky remained standing over him. Loki skimmed through the pages of the book, not knowing what he was supposed to be looking for. He stopped when he saw his own name, and nearby, those of his brother and father and mother. He read a page more closely, recognizing it as a tale from his own past, but twisted and distorted into something that bore little relation to reality. 

“What is this?” he asked after a few more pages of nonsense about Freya’s cats pulling the sun along. She had cats, yes, but they were nothing extraordinary. 

“It was at my Ma’s wedding,” Bucky explained. “My step-dad’s brother is some sort of professor over at Sarah Lawrence. They put me at a table with him and some other old professor fogies. I was mostly tuned out, counting the minutes until the dancing, but then I heard them say something about somebody named Thor. I figured I must have misheard, but still, it’s not a name I’ve ever heard, other than from you. So, I asked him to hold up, come again. Long story short, he told me there are all these old stories, no one knows how old. Norse mythology, it’s called. He started saying names I already know. Thor and Odin and Frigga and Heimdall and… and you. The next day, I started asking around, at bookstores and at the library. People over in Scandinavia, where all this stuff comes from, they used to worship you guys. No one believes in it anymore—they’re just stories now—but for a while it was a big deal, a real religion. But the stuff in the books is all different, wrong, not like what we’d always talked about. Did you know Thursday is named after your brother?”

Loki ran through the names days of the week that were used in this realm. “There is no Loki day.”

“You didn’t get one.”

Loki bristled. Of course he hadn’t. “No wonder, as this text speaks unfavorably of me while it burnishes Thor’s image ever brighter. Worse, it makes up beastly falsehoods. Fathering monsters? That was only a prank I played while in Vanaheim, not the truth.”

“You sure?” Bucky asked nervously.

“I refuse to dignify such a question with an answer.”

“I didn’t think so, but enough of the other stuff rang a bell. If I hadn’t known better—if I hadn’t seen you do magic on the regular, with my own eyes—I would have thought you’d lied about everything you told me, read it out of a book. For a few days I was so mad, thinking I’d been had all those years. But I _did_ see you do magic and appear out of thin air, loads of times, so that wasn’t it. Even so, part of me wondered if I just made it up, if I was crazy. I always thought so, you know, sometimes, about all of this. Thought maybe there was something wrong with me, and I was losing time every time I spent the day with you. Thought I was delusional and one day someone was gonna find out and put me in Bellevue.”

“You never told me of these fears.”

“You don’t ask your own crazy if you’re crazy. Obviously, it’ll tell you you aren’t.”

“That’s true.”

“But then I asked Steve if he remembered that English kid who skipped out of my birthday party years ago, and he said sure, he did, why was I asking? And I asked Anne, that girl you liked that one time. So, I knew you were real. But now there was all this other shit,” he said, gesturing at the book, “and you weren’t around to ask what the deal was.”

“But most of this is utter rot,” Loki said. 

“But enough of it’s real. It might not have happened yet. I mean, just tonight, you told me about the dragon in Muspelheim. And Thor dressing up as a bride to get his hammer back. You guys only just did those things on your trip. But they’re in the book.”

“They are?” Now Loki began to understand why Bucky had asked such nonsensical questions and looked so startled at his stories. He’d been trying to reconcile what he’d read with what he was hearing.

Bucky flipped the pages for Loki. His body followed his fingers and he sat down beside Loki. Loki scanned the destination page and found a terribly inaccurate rendition of his recent adventures. Whoever had recorded it had gotten all the details wrong, as though taken from hearsay of a half-remembered drunken nightmare.

“I wish to know who is responsible for this slander. My name and reputation in this realm are mud,” Loki complained.

“Fuck your reputation. Your head’s so far up your ass you don’t even get it, do you?”

In response, Loki leveled a gaze so chilling that the room actually grew noticeably colder. This had always worked to remind people that they had overstepped their place, but it failed here. Bucky didn’t even seem to notice. 

“I’ve read enough of these things to have figured out the stories trail off when you’re not much older than you are right now. Which means the last time you or anyone gave the storytellers new material was on this trip. Even though it was hundreds of years ago. It’s confusing, but hopefully you get what I mean.”

“I do,” Loki said. It was a good theory. However, he wanted more time to consider it, and in the meanwhile, he was more concerned with Bucky’s mood all evening and how this related. “I still don’t see what—” 

“Everything’s gonna keep going and one day pretty soon you’ll catch up,” Bucky blurted out. “I never thought about it before I found these books. You’ll catch up, and then what? It flips, and you’ll still be visiting me a thousand years from now, long after I’m dead.”

“But you won’t be dead. Not to me.”

“But I’ll know I’m dead in… ugh, it gives me a headache. I can’t explain it right.”

“I understand. Every time I return home, I have gone back in time. It will simply one day be the reverse. Nothing to warrant such dire consternation.”

“That means ‘worry’, right?” Bucky asked, and when Loki nodded, he continued, “Yeah, but you’re never dead. There are two of you right this minute, if I’ve got it right. One here with me and one… probably in Asgard.”

Loki had been too busy on his voyage to think much about the logistics of an arrangement he had not currently been enjoying. And he certainly hadn’t had the maturity or knowledge to think about it in this way before. However, Bucky’s reasoning, as always, seemed sound enough. Loki wondered now, what his future—or present?—self was doing, if perhaps he had been watching himself—watching them—this whole time. Or if he had decided to stay away in order to let events play out unmolested. Yes, he decided. That is what he would think to do. 

Bucky’s visible distress brought him back to the moment. He was making the face he always made when letting out something that had been bothering him—the same face he’d made so long ago, when they’d met after the birthday party, their first and only falling out. 

“What does this have to do with your strange behaviour? I know it does. You can’t deny that you have been ill at ease all evening.”

“I knew you hadn’t done half of this stuff the last time I saw you. You’d have told me, I know you would have. Which meant this was some kind of HG Wells-Jules Verne shit. There are always rules in those books, but I can’t as my Ma what to do like you can. I didn’t know what to think. And then tonight you started telling me this stuff, and I can see it starting to happen. It’s getting closer. The day when it flips.”

“When was your mother’s wedding?” Loki asked, as understanding came to him. “For how long has this been weighing on you?”

The answer was as expected. “About a year ago.”

“The same time you decided to stop studying Asgardian. The same time you stopped practicing archery. The same time you began seeing Susan more seriously. Yet these things are not connected with learning the existence of some stories and feeling confused as to whether or not I should know about them.”

“You said you’d be back a year and a half ago.”

“I told you, the itinerary was—”

“I know. I told you, I get it.”

“So?”

And now Bucky took a deep breath, in preparation for the kind of unloading he’d done the last time they’d fought. Loki could tell that finally he was getting to the heart of the matter, to something that Bucky had likely been repressing for years, if Loki knew him, and he _did_ know Bucky. If Loki was the master of holding a grudge, Bucky was the master of holding in his pain. They made quite a pair.

“You don’t get what it’s like. For years, I had this whole secret life. Lying all the time. Thinking I was crazy. For you, it’s just every so often, like Christmas—no, like the Olympics. But for me it was all the time. I was either getting ready for you to swing by or I was coming down from having you over. I forgot what it was like to be regular. And then… Bam. Nothing, for _years_. The time you were supposed to come back came and went, and I didn’t know when you’d come again—if you ever would, or if it was over. I never really gave it my all with a girl before because… well, lots of reasons. But part of it was that I always had one foot here, one foot dreaming about some magic country in the sky. Never felt _here_ enough to be serious about much except Steve and my family. And then all this shit about the time flip. I thought maybe if I put it all out of my head, that would be one way to make sure I didn’t mess anything up, or break any rules. And to make sure… I dunno. I thought it might be easier than waiting for it to happen.”

Bucky was not being particularly articulate, but Loki got enough of the gist to know he should feel incensed. 

“So you were ready to give me up because, what? Because you were frightened of something that might happen one day, something based on a book that you knew to be largely nonsense, something that you would never personally feel the ramifications of?”

“I don’t know what I was trying to do. But for the past year, I’ve been normal and that’s been… It was okay. But then the damn watch in my desk started to glow and...”

“You ignored it,” Loki accused. “Susan said you have been acting off for longer than you have been trying to meet me. You saw it glow and you ignored it for days, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t ignore it. I spent the whole time staring at it, wanting to... And I couldn’t really hold out for long, as you can see. I got home tonight and gave in. Gave in and went for it before I’d hardly gotten my shoes off.”

“I suppose I should be honored that you finally invited me back?” Loki sneered. 

Bucky grew heated, too. “Oh, please. It doesn’t take a genius to tell that you’ve been back for years. _You_ took your damn time about it, too. What’s your reason, huh?”

Loki hadn’t expected Bucky to figure that out, but of course he had. Of course he’d gleaned it from little things Loki must have let slip over the evening. 

“There were court responsibilities and—”

“You’re telling me you were too busy to spare a few hours to sail to the island and back? In _years_?”

They stared at one another, both red and angry and hurt. 

“Well, I’m sure you should be getting to sleep, if you have work in the morning,” Loki said as he stood to take his leave. “I should go.”

“Loki…” Bucky began.

“James?” Aunt Helen’s voice called from the hallway.

Loki stepped out of Bucky’s path to the door and turned invisible. It was faster and easier than summoning the portal. He watched from a corner as Bucky’s face fell. 

“See ya, Loki,” he whispered sadly to what he must have assumed was his already departed guest. 

“I heard voices in here,” Aunt Helen said once he’d opened the door. She pulled the tie on her dressing gown even tighter as she peered past Bucky and into the room. “You know I don’t allow you to bring girls home. And Steve would never have come here and not said hello to me.”

“I was, er, talking to myself, practicing a presentation I have to give tomorrow, that’s all. There’s no one here. See for yourself.”

Aunt Helen checked everywhere, behind the curtains and even under the bed. When she’d satisfied herself that no one was here, she relaxed. “I didn’t think so, but I had to check. I trust you. Or, well, I trust Susan. She’s too good of a girl to sneak in here. And you’re too smart of a boy to mess things up with a girl like her.”

“Couldn’t be more right,” Bucky said, and kissed her on the cheek. “Night!”

“Goodnight, James.”

Loki quietly watched while Bucky closed the door and sat back down on the bed. The false cheer he had put on for his aunt disappeared immediately, replaced by dejection. He kicked his shoes off and inched his bottom backwards until his back was against the wall. Then he brought his knees under his chin, wrapped his arms around them, and let his head fall. 

He looked like an overgrown and better-dressed version of the heartbroken little boy Loki had first spied at the top of the hill. 

“Godammit,” Bucky muttered to himself. He reached one of his hands into his pocket and took out the watch. Fingering it lovingly, he muttered again, “Come on, Loki. Please.”

There is nothing more honest than the behavior of someone who believes him or herself to be alone and unobserved. There was no denying the longing on Bucky’s crumpled face, nor the remorse in his voice. 

Loki relented. It had only ever been a matter of time, he realized, with a flash of annoyance at his own weakness.

“I can muffle the sounds of our conversation if you’d like, so that she will not hear,” he said, reappearing.

Bucky quickly looked up, relieved. “You came back.” 

“I was never gone.” Loki pointed to where he’d been standing. 

Bucky frowned. “So you’ve been here the whole time? Watching?”

“Yes. I mastered the invisibility spell soon after I last saw you.”

“Promise me you won’t do that again. Promise you won’t spy on me like that.”

“Why? Do you have something to hide?”

“No. But friends don’t do that to each other.”

Loki took off his helmet and rested it on the dresser before unfastening his cape and stepping out of his boots. He climbed up on the bed to sit beside Bucky. 

“We have to be friends in order for that reasoning to apply,” he said, stretching out his hand, and hoping the plea for reconciliation would be understood without Loki having to debase himself by making it explicit.

It was. Bucky shook, and chuckled. “Friends. Even though you’re a twisty little shit. I know what you’re doing.”

And just like that, the awful tension of the evening was over.

“The question remains, however,” Loki said, because he had never been good at letting go of a hurt. “You said you enjoyed your time of being ‘regular’, as you call it. Is that what you still want?”

“That was okay, but this is always gonna be better. Even if it means I’m nuts.”

This, finally, was the correct answer. “You are not insane,” Loki reassured him.

“If you say so. Look, I want you to keep coming, but I’ve gotta figure out a way to make this work without daydreaming all the time. I’ve gotta live a real life, here.”

“I understand. But that is for you to sort out. I cannot help.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Every two weeks, as before?” Loki asked. 

“Things are different now that I don’t live with my Ma anymore. I’ve got work and class and a lot of stuff going on with Steve and Susan and everybody else, but I actually have more time these days, and nobody watching me like they used to or telling me where to be. We could see each other more often than we used to. But during the week, after work, if that’s okay.”

“It matters little.”

Bucky released his knees and let his legs stretch out in front of him, to match Loki’s. 

“Maybe… maybe it won’t be so bad when we cross the flipping point,” he said, but he still cringed at the thought.

“If it happens at all.” Loki nudged Bucky’s foot with his own, and felt the bed shake when Bucky flinched. Bucky had become uncommonly jumpy about physical interaction, Loki noted, but paid it little mind. They’d just finished dealing without enough other problems for this to be the least of his worries. “I was working on this, you know, even before I left. The same problems that have been making you so unhappy have been on my mind, too, although perhaps not these specific ones. I _will_ fix this. I’m halfway to my first step. And once I present it to you, I’ll be able to start on the second. Everything is going to be all right.”

“Fix it how? Seems to me it’s impossible. You are what you are, and I am what I am. There’s no fixing that.”

“You’ll see. One day none of this will matter, and you and I will travel the stars together.”

“If you say so, but I’m not holding my breath. If I learned anything from all this, it’s to stop doing that,” Bucky said. “Honestly, I’d settle for a picture at this point.”

“I can do better than that. Come, move forward a little.” 

With a confused look, Bucky did as he was bid. He froze when Loki passed a leg behind him and moved to wedge his body in the narrow space between Bucky’s back and the wall. He crossed his long legs beneath Bucky’s bent ones and wrapped his arms around Bucky's torso to keep him from scooting any farther forward.

“Loki, uh,” Bucky choked out. “What the hell are you…”

Loki buried his face between Bucky’s shoulder blades and breathed him in. Aunt Helen must have used a different brand of detergent from Mrs. Barnes, and Bucky appeared to have begun wearing cologne, because there were new scents about him, but the sweat dried into his shirt smelled just as Loki remembered. 

“Relax,” he said, absent-mindedly massaging whatever bits of Bucky’s skin his hands fell on as he moved them upwards. Loki felt relaxed, sitting here like this—more relaxed than he’d felt since he’d last been here—basking in the heat radiating off his friend. Remembering what he was meant to be doing, he concentrated on an image and whispered, “I haven’t yet had cause to practice this, but in theory it should work.”

“What should wo—” Bucky began to reply, but the word stuttered off and finished as a long and awed, “Ohhhh,” when Loki slid his hands up Bucky’s face and covered his eyes. 

The room around them shimmered away, and suddenly they were immersed, surrounded by an image pulled from Loki’s memories.

“Holy shit,” Bucky whispered, looking around. In the image, _he_ was Loki, sitting where Loki had sat that day. And Loki was simultaneously behind him, inside his mind, and still in the place he’d occupied in the memory. They were one, in a way.

“This was the view from the ledge outside my window in Vanaheim,” he explained.

“What’s that over there?” Bucky pointed to the left—pointed with Loki’s arm.

“The palace gardens. They were getting ready for a feast this day. I didn’t attend, because I wasn’t feeling well, but it smelled delicious. I cannot conjure that for you. Only the image.”

“Don’t worry about it. This is better than… This is better than anything. Better than the movies, even.”

The scene was fuzzy in some places, where Loki’s memory itself was fuzzy, but Bucky hardly noticed. He asked question after question about everything he saw. The questions caused Loki to speak more casually, to tell stories he hadn’t practiced—quotidian details that he had almost forgotten, but which Bucky seemed to enjoy more than the grand adventures Loki had described before. The stories even loosened Bucky’s tongue, bringing to mind various anecdotes and little jokes of the sort that had always amused Loki. 

Loki had meant to focus on the journey, but when they’d exhausted all the stimuli in the Vanaheim image and another in Muspelheim, Bucky immediately asked to see Asgard. Loki conjured the most impressive sights, but all of these were of vastly less interest to Bucky than Loki’s suite of rooms, the fencing grounds behind the stables, Thor’s favorite tavern, and other boring places.

“And now I will show you the most beautiful thing of all,” Loki said, switching to the image he had been most eager to show off. 

“Hey, it’s Friuli!” Bucky exclaimed. “Almost forgot what it looked like. Except this doesn’t look right. Unless you remember it wrong? Anyway, what are you showing me a place I’ve already been for?”

“I took a pilgrimage there while we were in Midgard.”

“You guys came to Earth?”

Loki hadn’t mentioned that leg so far, partly because nothing worthy of the history books had happened here, but also because something had been holding him back from talking about the one thing he _had_ spent most of his time doing here. While generally polite about it, Bucky had never been shy about sharing his exploits with Loki. But Loki had never had cause to talk about such things before—had never had anything to talk about—and didn’t quite know how to start. But he wanted to talk about this.

“Yes, we were here, as a last leg, simply for tourism. Although, if you are correct, it must have been over a thousand years ago. That explains why it seemed different from what I remembered. It is a hardy little village to have survived for so long. But that is not what I am showing you. Look. Over there.” Loki pointed to where his mystery woman stood, beckoning him as she had that day.

Bucky whistled. “Now _there’s_ a dame. Who is she?”

“I do not know, but I intend to find out.” Loki told Bucky the whole story.

Towards the end, Bucky dragged Loki’s hands off his eyes to break the illusion. He wriggled around so that he could look him in the eye.

“What?” Loki asked, when he noticed Bucky regarding him strangely, a mixture of worried and sad.

“You’ve got it pretty bad, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say…” Loki tried to lie.

“Uh huh. You’ve got a weird look in your eye when you talk about her, though. You sort of went… I dunno. A little green. And your voice went all funny. Something not right.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Loki replied, feeling feverish and defensive. “And neither do you.”

“You don’t have to be a jerk,” Bucky replied. “I mean, she keeps appearing, and sort of coming on to you, and then disappears. What for? Why not just talk to you like a normal person? What’s she want?”

“I am sure her reasons are compelling,” Loki said. “Too much for you to understand.”

“Still a snob.” Bucky rolled his eyes. “Look, I was just saying it seems fishy to me, but whatever you say, buddy.” He released himself completely from Loki’s grasp and scrambled off the bed. He looked at his watch—a regular wristwatch—and swore under his breath. “How’d it get to be three AM?”

“We spent more time going over the mundane minutiae of the palace kitchens than I thought possible,” Loki replied. With Bucky’s weight and support gone, he slumped into himself. He hadn’t realized how tired he was until now. Now that he had to open his eyes again, he found that he didn’t want to. 

“I’m gonna be a wreck at work tomorrow.”

“At what time do you usually rise?”

“Seven.”

Loki grimaced. “I have not seen that hour in many years.”

Bucky threw a pillow at him. “Don’t have to rub it in.”

“I am in no shape to sail home, even if it is still the middle of the day there,” Loki said. “Napping here with you should help.” 

Bucky looked inexplicably nervous. “You wanna sleep here? In the bed with me?”

“What of it?”

Bucky sighed. “Nothing, I guess.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel the need to fess up. This Jotun war from the first scene of the Thor movie is the one place where my time travel ‘math’ based on assumed average lifespans falls apart. Canonically, that war happened ~1,000 AD, which was around when Loki was born. But Loki was the developmental equivalent of a human 10 year-old when he started visiting, and now he's 20 and its ~1941 in Bucky's time, so... it doesn't really work. I tried to wrangle this when I first started writing this fic, but in the end, I decided it would be better to write a story that I liked narratively rather than one dictated by a made-up math limitation. So, if you could just pretend that it all lines up? *looks sheepish*


	12. Chapter 12

After not nearly enough sleep, Loki woke to the sound of huffs and puffs and groans. The noise, combined with the strange room he found himself in, made him at first think he had fallen asleep in some strangely decorated brothel in the low part of Asgard’s capital city.

But then he registered the pajamas he wore. His eyes focused on the ugly plaid curtains on the windows, and he remembered that plaid was a thing that belonged to Earth. And these curtains, more specifically, to Aunt Helen. He remembered where he was now—the visit, the awkward evening, the argument, and the friendly reconciliation. But the bed was empty beside him. He sought the source of the noise, and his friend.

Bucky lay on the floor, curling himself in and out of a fetal position, and counting under his breath. He wore nothing but his white under-shorts, and his hair stuck out at all angles. Sweat collected in the faint line that ran down the center of his ribcage and pale stomach. Bucky was too lithe to have the horizontal lines that ran across the way Thor did. But he was nicely formed in his own way, Loki noticed for the first time, with strong shoulders and knees that had become less knobbly over the years.

Loki flopped himself towards the edge of the bed, propping his chin on balled and stacked fists to watch this odd display. “What in the world are you doing?” 

Bucky finished his counting and collapsed. “Gotta stay in shape. Girls like a guy with a little muscle on him.”

“My brother has muscles coming out of his ears, and I’ve never seen him make such a spectacle of himself.”

“Well, lucky him.” Bucky got up and lightly swatted the back of Loki’s head with his discarded tee-shirt. “Get up, your royal lazybones. I’m gonna take a shower and then we’re out of here. We’ll grab breakfast near my office.”

Loki was so glad to see everything fall back into easy normality between them that he let Bucky get away with the rudeness. 

It was strange, going through a morning routine like this. Loki had thought that, after all his visits to this little realm, there was nothing new to experience and learn here. But rush hour was foreign to him, as was this meal. They stopped at a diner counter near Bucky’s office for coffee and doughnuts, foodstuffs Loki had never been here early enough to try. Bucky found them a place to stand far in the corner, away from most of the other patrons. 

Loki concentrated on the dunking technique that Bucky tried to teach him, without letting the pastry break off and fall into the cup. Once he’d mastered it, he looked up to find Bucky staring at something on the other side of the room. He followed his gaze to a young, very pretty couple. The woman’s curly red hair perfectly framed her striking face, and the man rivaled any of the tall, dark and handsome actors Loki had seen in the movies. She could have been a dancer, and he a rugged jungle explorer.

“A delicious tableau, is it not?” he murmured. 

“What is?” Bucky stammered, looking down at his cup again.

“The people you were staring at. I do believe we could make an attempt, both of us. There is a similarity in their noses and in the shape of their jaws that tells me they are siblings, not a couple.” When Bucky stared dumbly at him, Loki asked, “What is it?”

“I’m still getting used to you talking about stuff like that. You never cared before.”

“Things change. You know this. We’ve both grown up, as we discussed last night.”

Bucky glanced back at the couple and agreed, “Yeah, she’s something to look at, that’s for sure.”

“Not only her. A moment ago, you were trying to decide which one you find most appealing. I could see it in your eyes.”

Bucky’s jaw dropped. “What the… What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about how you are looking at—” 

“Well, it’s a lie. It’s a dirty lie.”

“What is a lie?” Much as Loki never failed to grow heated when accused of lies he wasn’t telling, he couldn’t get upset about this, because he had no idea what the supposed falsehood might be. 

“That I’m looking at…” Bucky lowered his voice. “Hey, I’m not a queer.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“You’ve got a vocabulary like a fucking dictionary, but the words that are a pain to have to explain are the only ones you don’t get.” 

“The magic chooses the limitation, not I. Tell me. What does it mean?”

“A guy who likes other guys, you know, not just as friends.”

“Yes, and?” Loki couldn’t understand how something so normal had managed to elicit such a dramatic reaction in his friend. “But how is what I said a lie?”

“Because it is. I don’t look at guys like that.”

Loki studied Bucky’s increasingly red face and overworked jaw. Slowly, carefully, he said, “I would take umbrage at the fact _you_ are the one lying to me, if it were any less obvious that you are lying to yourself foremost. Why?”

“I’m not lying,” Bucky whispered, less and less convincingly. “People here don’t feel like that. Guys go with girls. I can’t believe you’re even…”

“You wouldn’t have a word for it if it were so impossible.”

“Have you ever read a book or seen a movie where the two guys were together, or the two girls?” Bucky asked.

Loki tried to remember the vast quantity of stories he had consumed here over the years, narrowing to the ones he knew Bucky had also consumed, either for pleasure, for school, or because Loki had demanded it in order to have someone with whom to discuss. 

He smiled as an example struck him. “Ah. Dorian Gray and Basil Hallward.”

“I gotta confess, I got bored two pages in.”

“But you let me believe you had read it!” Loki was shocked. “We spoke about it at length. I remember the day distinctly.”

Bucky shrugged. “You mean _you_ spoke about it at length. Do you know how many books you’ve tried to make me read? On top of all my homework. I’m a busy guy and I don’t have centuries like you. Something had to give.”

Invoking the limitations of his mortality was possibly the only way Bucky could have evaded that looming row. Still stunned by Bucky’s ability to lie to him, Loki wondered if Bucky also knew this was the one way to manipulate him out of a fight.

In the meanwhile, he proposed another example. “Danglars’s daughter and the music teacher. They ran away together at the end of _The Count of Monte Cristo_. They were quite certainly in love.”

“I don’t remember anything like that, but I only read the abridged version.”

Loki thought again. “Psmith and Mike, surely?”

“Get your mind out of the gutter, Loki. They were just friends. They both got married. To women. Didn’t you read that one?”

“No, but if I can find an open bookstore, I know what I’ll be doing tomorrow. Regardless, marriage does not nullify what came before, nor the feelings that could exist again afterwards.”

“Sure it does.”

“And yet I tell you I know from experience around the realms that it does not.”

“Well, we’re not ‘around the realms’. We’re here. And I’m not like that,” Bucky argued hotly.

A thousand little questions he’d vaguely wondered about over the years pieced themselves together in Loki’s mind. He’d noticed, of course, that Bucky’s trafficking had only been with girls, no matter what his eyes appreciated, but he’d never before cared enough about the subject to ask why. This was clearly a larger issue, for now he did note how, despite the looks he had, on occasion, seen between men, or between women, there were no lovers on the streets.

“There are some who prefer the opposite sex almost exclusively, of course. And for those races whose reproduction requires that specific combination of parts, at least a passing interest in the opposite sex is necessary. But that does not preclude all sorts of liaisons.”

Bucky squinted at him. Whispering, he asked, “What are you saying? That you know people who…”

“I myself.”

“What? No way.” Bucky shook so hard that he spilled some coffee all over his jacket. 

Loki cleaned it with a subtle wave of the hand. Not subtle enough, however. The server passing by happened to see, and began to stare, blinking hard. 

“Yes, I, even here, in Midgard,” Loki continued, once the man had passed, shaking his head and mumbling about having had too much to drink the night before. “Mostly in Midgard, if I am honest. For someone in my position, there is little opportunity for such congress at home, unless I visit a brothel, in disguise. Thor sometimes takes me, and we decide on the way which side of the house we are in the mood to—”

Bucky choked on his coffee. “Jesus Christ. Thor, too?”

“Yes, of course. As I have been trying to tell you, this is common practice in Asgard and in many of the realms I visited. In truth, this is the first I have found this intolerance so strongly held, and without any nuance at all. Even in Asgard, of course, a great warrior or the man of higher rank is the aggressor in the coupling, but beyond that—”

“So, are you saying… Are you seeing anybody right now? Or were you? Your other friend… uh, the one from Vanaheim… I mean, he’s from that other place, but he lives in Vanaheim. Did you two ever…”

“No, we did not. Why do you ask?” Loki inquired.

“Just wondered. The way you talked about him. I didn’t think anything about it last night, but now… On second thought, it kinda sounds like maybe you two…”

“No,” Loki said. “I have never been with anyone I felt that way about… anyone I felt anything for at all, beyond the physical pleasure of the moment.”

“That’s good,” Bucky blurted out, too quickly, too gladly.

“It is? Why?”

Bucky scratched his head and looked at the floor. His every reaction was bizarre. Loki assumed this must have all come as a greater shock than he could quite comprehend, not being from this realm nor growing up with these prejudices.

“I don’t know,” Bucky mumbled. “I don’t know why I said that.”

“Though I must admit, you are not entirely wrong about Vifill,” he said next, simply trying to think of something to say so that Bucky would stop looking so hunted. “I sometimes wondered if—”

That comment somehow managed only to make things even worse. Even though he’d been the one to introduce the subject, Bucky covered his face and interrupted again. “I don’t wanna hear about it.”

“At any rate, you know full well where my thoughts and heart lie, Bucky.”

Bucky peeked through his fingers. In an inexplicably awed voice, he asked, “Yeah?”

“I showed you her last night.”

Bucky’s fingers went back over his eyes. “Right, right. The mystery lady you’re itching to go find. Sorry. I forgot.”

Loki had had enough, and went directly to the point. “I see plainly that you think less of yourself because of your desires. Do you think less of me as well?”

“No. I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just surprised, is all. You went from hating when anyone talked like that to… this. It’s different for you, I guess. Everything about you is different. You can do whatever you want.” Bucky sounded sad and confused.

Loki decided to leave him in peace. Bucky had always been the sort to need to work things out on his own, and in his own time.

“Before I go,” Loki said, changing the subject, “I’ll need you to check the watch rather more often for the next little while, and be ready to run into a private corner at any given moment. Sleep with it clenched in your hand, or on a chain around your neck. We know the magic requires skin contact. My hope is that it will work even if you are sleeping, as long as you went to bed with the will to summon me if I want to come. I would like to test that tonight.”

“All right, but… Why?”

“Sometime soon, there will be some urgency to my arrival. Last night I mentioned to you a project I have been working on to overcome the limitations of our situation. It has been centuries in the making, but I am finally close to completing that project. Certain ingredients have needed to marinate before I can even begin, and they are almost ready. However, although the process has been slow, the consuming must be quick. As soon as it is finished, I will need to come here and give it to you.”

“The consuming of what?”

“It is an ancient potion that will increase your hardiness, increase your strength, and make you the most perfect and ideal specimen of your species that could ever exist.”

“Huh,” Bucky said, looking at the ground as he walked, and obviously thinking hard. “You’re saying this would make me, what, healthier?”

“That is the least of it. Once shored up in this way, I worry less about you being run over in the street, or falling to some quotidian malady. But this is merely the first step. Once the potion grants me a little more security as to your well-being, I can turn my attentions to finding a way to transcend your mortal state altogether.”

Bucky seemed almost not to have heard the last part. He simply nodded to himself, lost in thought, and smiled a little. At least he understood the enormity of the project Loki had undertaken for him.

“I’ll be on the look-out for the call,” Bucky replied. “But we should still make plans. I’ll see you Thursday evening, unless you finish your potion thing before, right?”

“Yes.” Loki looked at the tall, dingy building on Willoughby Street in front of which they had stopped. “Is this your office?”

“Yeah, this is me. Are you heading out?”

“I think I’ll take a walk and wait for the bookstore on Fulton to open before I leave. Is the one I remember still there?” Loki checked.

“Yeah, it’s still there.”

“I’ll need to borrow the purse.”

“Sure thing. See ya, Loki,” Bucky replied in farewell, as he always had, and as though nothing had changed.

Since resolving the dramas of the previous evening, and letting go, for the moment, the slighter one of this morning, Loki allowed himself to hope that nothing had.

* * *

It took him a few more years—years that were punctuated with many more visits to New York than he’d enjoyed in similar time periods before, pleasant visits that reinforced how right his decision to strive to keep his friend had been—before Loki finally held in his hands a small cauldron containing two doses of Lifeline Formula. He stood, covered in ash and purple pollen and tears that had been running down his face for days. The forgotten basement room that he had set up as a workshop was equally disgusting. Lashings of tangible magic and fermenting fire dew had spattered along the walls. Some sort of kaleidoscope-coloured and softly singing mold had already begun to sprout in the crevices between the stones. 

He would be glad to get out of here and back into the sunshine.

He poured the silvery, viscous liquid into two large flasks. So dense was the potion that the flasks strained the strap of the satchel Loki had brought with him. 

He passed Thor, Sif and Fandral on his way to the marina.

“Brother, where have you been hiding this past week? Not even Mother’s spells could find you! If not for the note you left saying all was well, I would have set out on a quest to find you ere long. What have you been doing?”

“Where are you going in such a hurry?” Fandral asked. 

“And what is on your face?” Sif asked.

Instead of answering, he waved them all away and continued to half-walk, half-run to his boat, changing his appearance incrementally. By the time he had untied the ropes and unfurled the sail, he had become unrecognizable. 

Loki had put out the signal as soon as he’d finished, and happily, Bucky had already signaled back. Loki sailed more aggressively than he ever had, arriving at the island in record time. He passed through the portal and into a tiny space lit only by a narrow piece of glass that looked out into a narrow shaft between buildings. Wooden shelves pressed into his back, and reams of paper, organized into files, threatened to fall down on his head. His coming must have stirred up some dust, because clouds of it blew into his nose.

“What is this hole?” 

“Storage cabinet,” Bucky whispered. “And lower your voice. I’m at work, and anyone could come in if they hear us.”

“Couldn’t you have stepped out for a moment? It’s stifling in here,” Loki replied as he uncorked the flasks.

“I only just got back from a break. I can’t go out again that soon. You said to be ready whenever. It’s not my fault your timing is shitty.”

“After almost five hundred years of work to produce one of the most precious compounds in the history of the universe, I had hoped for surroundings a bit more fitting to the occasion,” Loki grumbled. “But here it is. I hope the effects are not _too_ immediate. If I am to grow in height and girth to match Thor, I might squash you in this cupboard. And you… I do not know quite enough about humans to predict the results, but I imagine you will be as Perseus, or Jason, or one of the other great heroes of antiquity. Or perhaps Randolph Scott.”

“Randolph Scott? What, is he your type or something?” Bucky asked quickly. It was the first time he had brought up their breakfast conversation in all the visits between then and now. 

“I don’t know. He was merely the first example to come to mind. He’s handsome enough… But this is hardly the moment to discuss that.” 

Bucky put his nose to the top of the flask and pulled a face. “God, this stuff smells foul. What’s in it?”

“The few ingredients you might have heard of are such that I don’t think you want me to tell you.”

“Smells like it.”

“Drink it, friend. Drink it and become the best and most special of your kind. Become in actuality what you have always been to my mind’s eye.”

Even in the dim light, Loki could see Bucky grimace again as he held his nose and began to drink. Loki followed suit. It _did_ taste foul, even fouler than it smelled.

Loki drank his to the last drop, but Bucky very meticulously lowered the flask when he looked to be only halfway through.

“Go on,” Loki urged. “Don’t stop.”

“This stuff’s thick as hell. It’s like drinking a thermometer.”

“Do you have any idea how long I’ve been about making this for you? Stop complaining and finish it.”

“I can’t. I just, uh, I just ate a huge lunch.”

“It must be consumed all at once.”

“How do you know? I thought nobody’s made this in five thousand years.”

“It is standard magical practice.”

“Look, I can’t drink another sip right now, rules or not. I mean it. I’ll burst. What’s worse, drinking it in two takes, or vomiting the whole thing up on you? My stomach’s not like yours, I’ll bet. I, uh, the magic’s got to allow for stuff like that, right?”

Loki thought about this. He supposed it made sense; Bucky’s rationales almost always did. And he did in fact know of several spells and potions with clauses depending on the beings involved. It stood to reason that the same might hold true here. So he relented, saying, “Very well, but as soon as you can…”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll finish the rest.” Bucky glanced around him. “But you gotta get out of here. I have a meeting in ten minutes, and someone might wonder where I’ve gone off to.”

Loki had little patience for nor interest in Bucky’s job. He looked forward to a day when such pedestrian concerns no longer mattered. Bucky’s destined role in life was to be at Loki’s side, to serve as counselor and confidante to the next All-Father, not to waste his hours toiling for vulgar men in a dusty office, at a middle-class wage. But Loki no longer wanted to sit in this cabinet, and he was tired of whispering, so he complied. 

“I’ll look out for your signal,” he said. “If anything goes wrong, or you begin to feel ill, send for me immediately.”

“How long until something happens?”

“I do not know,” Loki replied. He concentrated, hoping to feel the strength bubbling within himself, but he did not. He had hoped to return to the marina already a match for Thor, but so far he felt nothing of the sort. However, he did feel _something_ , a tingling under his skin, and a heightened awareness of his magic than he had before. He hoped this was the prelude to something greater.

* * *

A week went by. A month. Six months. And yet nothing happened. Loki’s seidr grew in strength, but that was simply due to increased confidence, he reasoned. Anyone who had completed such a project could do anything, and this had given him the drive to try new things. Loki was able to master tricks faster and more completely than he ever had before. Even Frigga marveled at his power, and proclaimed there was little more she could teach him, for he had outstripped her skill almost entirely.

But that was not what he wanted. Magic had never been the intended result of this. Magic, he already had, and had always had. He wanted to become more like the Thor, to cease existing on the sidelines of Asgard as a misfit. He wanted to be taken as seriously as his brother was, to be seen, to gain his father’s notice and respect, to accede to the throne.

So far, nothing of that sort was happening. His increased magical prowess only served to alienate him further. His musculature thickened not a whit. 

There was similarly no word from Bucky before their next appointed meeting. It had only been a day or so for Bucky, but enough time had elapsed for Loki to know not to expect anything to happen to him either.

“I am sorry,” he said when next they met. Loki stretched his legs out under the table and poured Asgardian spirits from a small vial into the brandy and soda that had been served to him in this cocktail lounge. He needed to bring his own drinks if he was to match Bucky in inebriation.

“You? Sorry? That’s new. What are you sorry for?”

“After all that, I have failed in my endeavor. The potion did not work.”

“It didn’t?” Bucky seemed confused, then oddly relieved, then falsely chipper, all in the space of a second. “No, uh, I guess it didn’t.”

Loki squinted at him. “What did you feel?”

“Nothing,” Bucky said quickly. “Well, no, that isn’t true. I don’t feel like the ideal specimen of my race or whatever the deal was, but we… I mean, _I_ do feel healthier, stronger.”

“We?” Loki’s sharp ears had not missed this.

“We, I mean, you and me,” Bucky said brightly. “You said your magic’s gotten stronger.”

“Yes, but that signifies nothing.”

“Here, feel this.” Bucky flexed his uninspiring arm and put Loki’s hand around it. “See?”

“I believe your morning exertions have finally taken hold, that’s all. I tell you, nothing has changed. I am as I was.”

“It might just take longer for you,” Bucky suggested. It was odd how, despite a lack of results, he truly seemed to believe that it had the potential to work. Such extreme faith in his friend was touching, but…

“I doubt it.”

“Thanks anyway, though,” Bucky said, as the singers took their places on the stage. “No matter what, it means a lot that you went through the trouble. It means a lot to me that you made it. I… Just, thanks.”

“You thank me for nothing, but all right. I promise you, my next effort will not fail. I _will_ make you like me.”

“Sure. Whatever happens, though, thanks.”


	13. Chapter 13

“I won’t be able to sleep tonight, I swear,” Susan said breathlessly, clinging to Bucky’s arm like a spore as they exited the theatre. “I’ve never been half so scared in my entire life.”

“What a remarkably tranquil existence you must lead,” Loki said dryly.

But Susan was no fool. She heard the archness that Loki could not—cared not to—fully dissemble. Her reciprocated dislike lay similarly half-hidden behind a sheen of friendliness. Teasingly, she replied, “Ha! He’s funny, Bucky. Really funny. And that accent. Makes everything he says sound real classy.”

“A regular laugh riot,” Bucky sighed.

“It’s too early for bed,” Loki said, eyeing the way Susan clung even harder, wrapped herself even further around Bucky. He took it as a personal challenge; knowing her, it was probably meant as such. “What do you two say to a drink? We can go to my hotel. The lobby bar is excellent. My treat, of course.”

Bucky looked warily at Susan, almost as though hoping she would say no. “What do you think?”

Susan leveled a bright, brittle smile at Loki. “As long as there’s iced tea. I try not to drink during the week. Like to stay on my toes.”

“And for what do you need to stay on your toes? I didn’t know you were a ballerina.”

Bucky looked back to shoot a warning frown at him before leading them all around the corner and onto Montague Street. “Quit it, Luke” he said.

“He doesn’t mean it,” Susan said. “He’s just testing me. Seeing how sharp I am.”

“Oh, am I?”

“Sure. So? How do I stack up?”

“Like a pyramid,” Loki replied, thinking of the tomb underneath that he would like to bury her in.

They’d been going at it all evening—fighting with honey-drenched barbs for a prize that Loki had lost track of. The film they’d just watched had served as an hour and a half reprieve for Bucky. He looked exhausted, but Loki couldn't stop. He had loathed Susan instinctively, irrationally, from the first moment he’d met her, and increasingly with every subsequent exposure. He hated her wavy black hair. He hated her mischievously twinkling blue eyes and her toothy grins. He hated the way her painted lips left an oily red splotch on everything they touched, be it glassware or Bucky’s jawline. 

He didn’t know _why_ he hated her, and the confusion only made him hate her more. In truth, she was lovely. Clever, lively, caring, and, from what Loki could tell, belonging to a respectable family, with all the trappings and signifiers that went along with that. Most importantly, she adored Bucky. The fact that Loki could not begrudge her that stoked the flame of his loathing even more. 

These hostile evenings were part of a special, longer visit. Their very first attempt at this sort of arrangement. A few weeks after the failed potion, Bucky had begun acting squirrely. As usual, it had taken some slow prodding, but Loki had eventually worked the reason out of him. It turned out that both Steve and Susan had been putting pressure on him to divulge where it was he went so many evenings. They’d happened to catch Bucky in a lie—having told Susan that he’d been out with Steve, and having told his sister he’d been out with Susan. 

“Sloppy,” Loki had chided when he’d heard. 

“I’m not like you. Plotting out cover stories isn’t one of my hobbies,” Bucky had replied, and then continued with his proposition for this longer visit. He finished with, “I’m just saying, if it’s always the same time when you get back, then there’s no reason why you can’t stay as long as you like. There’s no reason you have to go back the same day, or the next morning. Even if I do have to go to work during the days, I like the idea of being on the same schedule for a while. You know, magic-time-wise.”

Bucky, as a rule, didn’t ask for much, and Loki _had_ promised to support his need to make things between them feel ‘real’, whatever that meant. And the logic did make sense…

All of which was how “Luke”, the British diplomat’s son, had returned for a long visit to New York. A visit so long that he’d rented a hotel room and paid for it by the month.

However, three months in, he found that wasn’t enjoying himself _quite_ as much as he’d hoped. To be fair, the good certainly outweighed the bad. Loki fit in here no worse than he fit in at home. His days were no more or less solitary than his days at home. While Bucky worked, he found ways to amuse himself. He had his books, and his walks, and the various little pranks he dreamed up and executed on the anonymous regulars in his urban life. He supplemented his novels with newspapers and radio speeches and Renaissance treatises. He studied various kinds of leadership. Presidents and Mayors and CEOs and Tammany Hall. These were only humans, with laughably short-lived dictatorships and democracies, but they provided more examples to study than existed at home. More than Thor had access to. Armed with such knowledge, Loki would surely be able to convince Father that he was the better-prepared heir to inherit the throne. 

Most importantly—most liberatingly—Loki found himself released, for the longest period of time in his life, of the yoke of resentment and constant deflatedness that went along with being Thor’s younger, misfit brother. Here, in New York, Loki was hardly as ‘real’ as Bucky wished him to be. However, there was a kind of peace to be found in being no one. More than there had ever been in his exalted rank. He was still a shadow here, but at least he was his own shadow. 

The only problem, really, was that he did not see nearly as much of Bucky as he would have liked. Loki had not known exactly how much he’d come to live for sleepovers in the grand four-poster bed in Aunt Helen’s house, which was how they had been handling late nights ever since his return. Going home alone, to his first-class but not technically palatial suite at the end of every day made for an inferior experience. There were many more moments for them to share, but none of them came with the desperate need to make them count.

To make matters worse, being around in this everyday way meant that he sometimes had to share Bucky with the other people in his life. 

Tonight’s dinner and film counted as his fifth outing with Susan in tow, not to mention the times Steve had tagged along. Loki shuddered to think how many more evenings like this he would have to endure for the sake of Bucky’s company. A lifetime’s worth? _His_ lifetime’s worth?

They soon entered the hotel and made their way to the lobby. As usual, it was full of fashionable members of society. Susan’s eyes danced when she entered, and she smoothed down her dress and hair. Even Bucky straightened his tie.

As the long-term occupant of one of the penthouse suites, Loki had been granted a permanently reserved cluster of armchairs in the lounge. He arranged for the staff to take their coats and then joined Bucky and Susan in sinking into the soft leather upholstery.

Loki spotted a shock of chestnut brown hair framing a square jaw. They belonged to a man leaning against the bar across the room, wearing a crisp suit and talking what looked like business with two older men. He held a martini in the long fingers that Loki had so very much appreciated stroking his cock the night before. The man—Loki thought his name was Ellison, but honestly couldn’t remember, and didn’t much care—noticed Loki as well. He nodded shallowly, waving with his martini glass. Loki nodded back and then away. Tonight was not for that. While he had enjoyed himself, the idea of a repeat, with anyone, filled him with a complex mixture of fear and boredom.

Susan’s sharp eyes, as usual, did not miss the silent interaction.

“You know that guy?”

“I made his acquaintance last evening.”

At these words, and the subtly lascivious tone that Susan, despite everything, was too innocent to hear, Bucky began craning his neck to get a better look. He looked between Loki and Ellison, and back again, gaze widening and then hardening. 

“Well, why don’t you say hello then?” Susan asked.

“I am here with you tonight,” Loki replied graciously, “and will not insult you by dividing my attention.”

“That’s nice, but you know, we should do a double date sometimes,” she suggested, probably as a means of diluting Loki’s presence on their shared evenings. “I know some girls…”

“Friends of yours?” Loki asked with a raised eyebrow. He did not for a moment believe she wished to set him up with anyone she liked.

“Unless you’ve already got a girlfriend back in England.”

“He hasn’t got a girlfriend, but he’s sweet on someone,” Bucky interjected, finally tearing his eyes away from the handsome Ellison.

“Really? Come on, spill.”

“Her name’s Amora,” Bucky said, altogether too seriously for the occasion.

“Pretty name,” Susan said. “How did you two meet?”

“We have not technically met,” Loki admitted.

“They started off by sort of seeing one another on the other side of rooms, but never got to talk,” Bucky said, with one last glance at Ellison.

“And now?”

“We… we speak on the phone,” Loki said, as the best approximation for ‘teleportational illusory link’ that he could think of. “However, I am going to meet her in person one day soon.”

“Oh, are you headed out of New York?” she asked, a bit too hopefully.

“For a time, though I cannot say when, or for how long.”

The waiter came by to take their drink orders, thus pausing the conversation. 

“So, you two really didn’t think the movie was scary?” Susan asked when he had gone again.

“Not really,” Bucky admitted. “The old Jekyll and Hyde movie was a lot better. You remember that one, right, Luke?”

“Yes, of course. It was very good,” Loki said, thinking of the pleasant afternoon they had spent together as boys, clutching one another and peeping through fingers during the transformation scenes. “They should have left well enough alone. I don’t understand this recent mania for remakes.”

“What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever seen, Bucky?” Susan asked.

“Remember a couple of winters ago? When Steve had pneumonia and that cold spell didn’t break for months? That was the most scared I’ve ever been.”

“He’s been doing great this winter, though,” Susan said, with a cheering kiss between his eyes. “He hasn’t been sick with anything in months.”

Bucky stared into his drink, looking oddly guilty about something that purportedly brought him joy. “Yeah, that’s true.”

“Then why the long face?” Susan asked, echoing the question in Loki’s mind.

“The pneumonia’s gone, but it’s like he’s gotten so used to being two steps ahead of dying that he’s started looking for other ways. Goddamn death wish. He won’t shut up about how he can’t wait for the country to stop stalling and join the war already so he can fight. Of all the…”

“The President’ll keep us out of it. It’ll be fine,” Susan said. “And even if it happens, and even though we know he’s doing a lot better, his papers still say he’s got everything a guy can have. They won’t take him. Not in a million years.”

“Let’s hope so. Anyway, what about you, Lo—Luke? What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever seen?” 

He’d never mentioned it to anyone, preferring to repress it entirely, but at the question, only one image came to Loki’s mind. Perhaps it was the film they’d just seen, or the fact that the memory had lived just below his conscious thought for so very long… But try as he might, he could not shake it tonight. 

“A man in a tank,” he whispered, feeling himself drowning in the horror all over again, as the memory reduced him once more to a lost little boy. “A man kept in a tank in a dark room, perpetually drowning yet never allowed to die, his continued existence demonstrated only by intermittent beeps and numbers written in light. A man in a tank who…”

“Buddy, buddy hey…” Bucky said, leaning forward to squeeze Loki’s knee, and the warm pressure brought Loki back to a present from which he had not realized he had begun to slip. “You all right? You’re shaking.”

Even Susan asked, with genuine concern, “Are you okay?”

Loki blinked a few times and ran his fingers through his hair, embarrassed by his loss of control. “It’s nothing. Merely a nightmare I had as a child.”

Bucky squinted at him. It was clear he did not believe Loki, but even if he’d known what to ask, he could hardly say anything in company. He contented himself with grumbling, “Must have been some nightmare.”

“Sounds kinda far-fetched,” Susan said. “Not the kind of thing worth getting so worked up over. Not a thing that could ever happen. Not in real life.”

Bucky continued to watch Loki’s face. “No, not in real life.”

Susan stood up. “Order me some of those green olives when the waiter comes by again, will ya? I’m going to go powder my nose.”

Loki wished the women of this realm would simply be honest about the fact that they were going to take a piss, as they did back in Asgard. This nonsense about noses was too transparently silly.

As soon as she was out of sight, Bucky shifted from his seat to her vacated one, slightly closer to Loki’s. This area of the lounge was packed with clusters of armchairs grouped closely together, too close for even whispered conversations to be private. Which was why Loki was surprised when Bucky began one.

“What the hell was all that about?” Bucky asked.

Loki automatically responded in the same tongue, before he’d quite registered which tongue it was they were speaking. “You’ll need to elaborate on which subject.” 

“Going at it with Susan like that. She’s not like that, not catty, but then you start baiting her, and…” Bucky said, and only now did Loki hear he was speaking Asgardian, producing tongue-twisting consonants and vowel formations with a native’s fluency and naturalness. He even used an idiomatic Asgardian metaphor for ‘bait’.

“I have tried with her, but she glares daggers at me sharper than the ones I fight with at home. I merely retaliate.”

“Bullshit. I wish you’d stop. It’s hell on me. If the trenches over in Belgium are anything like the war you two are fighting…”

“I will attempt a peace treaty.”

“That’d be great.” Bucky shifted awkwardly. “So, what’s with that guy? The one who was smiling at you.”

“I have to amuse myself somehow during the hours when you are busy.”

“So, it’s true? You… you…” Even though they were speaking a language no one in the entire realm could understand, Bucky’s voice dropped to a whisper. 

“Fucked him?” Loki helpfully filled in. “Yes, of course.”

“What if you got caught? You’d have gotten arrested.”

“And what cell could hold me? I would merely disappear before their eyes at any moment I choose. In truth, it was he who made all the overtures. I merely made myself agreeable. You know I have not the talent for flirting and wooing that you do. But if something is arranged for me, or offered freely with little effort on my part…”

“Still,” Bucky persisted, without making any actual argument.

“I attain my pleasure and they theirs. I listened to enough stories of your conquests when we were younger. Why are you so unable to appreciate that I finally have some of my own? Or is it that you are jealous?”

“What are you talking about?” Bucky tried very hard feign innocence, but Loki knew him too well.

“Do not try to play the fool; it does not become you. You are jealous that I am free to pursue that which you dare not.”

“That isn’t it.” And yet Bucky could not meet Loki’s eyes.

“Yes, it is. You are jealous. And curious. You want to know what I’ve done with—”

“No, Loki, I really don’t.” He cast about for further complaint. “Anyway, what was all that about men in tanks? Nightmare, my ass.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Loki said.

“You can’t shut me up like one of your peasants. Tell me.”

“You asked me long ago why I have never used the cave’s magic to travel elsewhere. The reason is because the one time I tried to do so, that is what I found. I have limited the use of the cave to here—to you—ever since, in order to avoid ever finding myself in such a realm again.”

“You don’t know where it was?”

“It was a realm where the inhabitants looked like you and me. But there are quite a few where that is true, and there may always be fringe realms beyond even the gaze of Heimdall’s eye.”

“Well, it looks like it really stuck with you. You should have said something about it before.”

“So that you could do what exactly?” Loki snapped. He swallowed and changed the subject; he had no wish to dwell on the memory, and managed to shove it back into the depths of his memory. Turning to a more pleasant topic, he said, “I thought you had let your language studies lapse. And yet I find you suddenly fluent. Much more so than you were only a few months ago.”

“I picked it up again,” Bucky said with a shrug. “Started listening to that record you made me years ago. Never know when it might come in handy, now that you’re back. Like now. When it’s just you and me.”

And that, right there, brought a smile to Loki’s lips and made up for the previous annoyances of the evening.

When Susan returned a minute later, with reapplied lipstick ready to smudge yet again on Bucky’s jawline, he even tried to be nice. 

(It didn’t quite work, but Bucky seemed to appreciate the effort.)

* * *

Loki had been here long enough to learn the habits and rituals of those in Bucky’s circle. Aunt Helen played bridge on Friday evenings, and Susan had choir practice, which usually meant that Bucky had the house to himself. A week after the movie with Susan, Loki climbed the steps of the stoop two at a time, unlatched the front door with magic, and let himself in. 

He didn’t expect to find Steve sitting in one of the armchairs in the parlour. 

“What are you doing here?” Loki asked.

“How’d you get in?” Steve asked. 

Loki set down the foot that, because of surprise, had hovered in mid-air for a second. “Bucky cut me a key.”

“Huh.” Steve’s jaw—always too prominent for his face, even back when he’d been fourteen—clenched even further.

“Are you waiting for him, too?” Loki asked, disappointed to see that he was most likely going to have to share tonight. Again.

“He had to help my Ma with some plumbing work that came up last minute. He sent me to let you know couldn’t make it.”

Loki got a flash of Steve rooting around underneath the kitchen sink, breaking pipe connections on purpose, requesting Bucky’s assistance, and smoothly orchestrating this entire situation. It might have been untrue or unfair, but Loki had a strong feeling this was what had happened, if only because it was what he himself might have done. And much as he tried to deny it, Steve was a wily, almost worthy adversary.

“Well,” Loki said slowly, not wanting to give Steve the compliment of his suspicion. “Message received. Good day.”

“Wait.” Steve jumped up when he saw Loki heading towards the door. “I know you’ve got nowhere else to be, not now that your plans fell through, and Aunt Helen won’t be back for hours. Stay awhile.”

“You could just as easily have left a note pinned to the door, or a message at my hotel. But you didn’t. Why? You had some purpose in getting me alone here with you, didn’t you?” 

“Just wanted to get to know you a little.”

Loki had never wanted to get to know Steve at all, and had assumed the feeling was mutual. Apparently not. 

“Why?” he asked.

“I can’t get a read on you. I couldn’t the last time I met you either, years ago. Nothing about you adds up. I thought if I could talk to you one on one…”

“I see. You find me suspicious and therefore you are… what? Warning me away from our mutual friend? Threatening that if I ever…”

Steve looked genuinely confused. “What? Why would I do something like that?”

 _Because I would_ , Loki thought to himself, but didn’t say, once Steve’s face made it plain that this was the wrong answer. 

“That would be way outta line,” Steve said. “He told me not to pry, and I’m gonna respect that, even if I don’t like it, because I know he’d do the same for me. My job’s to buy him a drink if he’s ever in a bad place, not to go behind his back and… and do what you’re saying. Look, I’m not going anywhere,” Steve said, standing his ground, despite being almost a foot shorter than Loki. “I don’t mean today. I mean in general. And I’ve got a feeling you’re not going anywhere either, for all that you two claim you’ve always just been pen pals and this is just a long visit.”

“You don’t believe us?”

Steve snorted in answer. “We need to figure this out, make it work. Because Bucky means a lot to me, and I know you mean a lot to him.”

“I see. You tricked me here so you could play the noble hero, the bigger man,” Loki said with a sneer. “But you have just as little love for me as I do for you. At least I do not attempt to dissemble the truth.”

“All you do is dissemble the truth,” Steve said, not needing to ask what ‘dissemble’ meant, the way Bucky might have. “Whatever the big secret is, I trust him enough to believe he’s got good reasons for keeping it. What _is_ my business is that I can tell you’ve got some problem with me, and I don’t know why. Even more than you’ve got with everybody else. That’s the other thing I don’t get. For all that you act all high and mighty, and look down at the rest of us like we’re all bozos, you think _he’s_ the best—and you’re right, he is—even though he’s still as big of a bozo as anybody else.”

Loki didn’t know what a ‘bozo’ was, and therefore had no response. However, Steve didn’t seem to need one, because he kept going, on a roll, similar to how Bucky kept going when he was unloading long-repressed anxieties or annoyances. Something about the rhythm was the same, the cadences, too. Loki wondered with which boy the pattern had started. He was only half listening, because this was Steve, after all—too busy wondering if there were rhythms he and Bucky similarly shared.

“But there’s one thing I do know,” Steve was now saying. “The last time I talked to you, one on one, things got better. All those years he was working three jobs plus school and driving himself into the ground. I remember I talked to you about it, and you promised you’d take care of it… I don’t know how, but I know you did something, because not too long after that, he stopped and everything was fine.”

“You think there is something wrong again?” Loki asked, worry instantly causing his mask of disdain to crack a bit.

“You didn’t need me to tell you the last time.”

“He has become ill at ease,” Loki said, thinking of Bucky’s constant frowns, about how nervous he so often became for no discernible reason. “Anxious. Melancholy at times.”

“Yeah. That’s part of it. You really don’t know why?” Steve seemed sad—no, _disappointed_.

Loki hadn’t the first idea what might be the matter, but he wasn’t about to admit as much. “I can guess,” he lied. “I will see what I can do.”

And yet, this must have been the wrong answer, or perhaps Loki’s ignorance was more transparent than he thought, because Steve didn’t seem at all heartened by the promise.

“All right,” he said dejectedly.

“Well,” Loki replied.

They stared at one another in silence.

“So,” Steve said, sitting down again in the oversized armchair that looked even larger around his small frame, “You mentioned the other day you had a brother. And something about how one of you is going to… take over his company or estate or something.”

“Or something.”

“Come on, Luke. I’m just trying to talk to you. Tell me something. Something that doesn’t sound like a riddle.”

“Now, where would be the fun in that? Consider your message—all of your messages—successfully delivered, and let us leave it at that, with no further charade.” Loki had no desire to spend an evening in idle chitchat with Steve. “Good day, Steve.”

Loki left the room and passed back into the vestibule. 

“Luke?” Steve’s quiet voice called after him from around the corner, out of sight. “I didn’t hear a key in the door when you came in. How did you really get in the house?”

Loki let himself out without answering. He accidentally let himself out of the world entirely.

He hadn’t meant to go so far. But yet again, Steve had driven Loki home again before he was ready to go. And now that he was back, there was nothing he could do to get back. Bucky thought him to be in Brooklyn; he hadn’t looked at the watch in months. Even if he were to discover Loki’s absence the next day, it would be months from now in Asgard.

With a sigh, and yet another curse at Steve for causing this situation, Loki picked the now well-worn way from the caves down to the shore, where his trusty boat scratched along the pebbled beach. Tides did not work in Asgard the way they did in Midgard, but whatever magic surrounded this place sometimes created odd weather patterns and winds. Such as the storm that had stranded him here the very first time, he guessed.

“What brings you to this lonely place?” a sweet voice said to him. 

He turned to see the lovely maiden of his dreams and his hauntings standing nearby. 

“The post to which you have tied the boat is worn, telling me that you visit here often,” Amora continued. “But why?”

“I…” 

“It is strange. I have been following the threads of magic that permeate the realms to find you. I have spent the entire morning casting this spell. But for a second just now—the thinnest hair’s breadth of time—I lost you entirely. But then you returned. And suddenly wearing such strange garb.”

Loki looked down at his Brooks Brothers ensemble, and repressed his panic. Hoping to distract her, he said, “Spell-casting requires precise concentration. Perhaps your focus slipped.” 

She laughed. “I have never been wooed with criticisms before.”

“I did not mean…” For all the diplomatic fame that his tongue had brought him, Loki found himself stammering like an idiot. He could negotiate peace agreements and subtly eviscerate courtiers who annoyed him, but, as he had confessed to Bucky the other day, he had never mastered the art of flirtation. 

“It was but the truth. My focus slipped in thoughts of you. Why do you tarry in coming to visit me, my prince. Surely you are not so reliant on dear mother’s permission?” she taunted, almost shaming him, for that had indeed been the case.

Loki reached out to touch her but felt nothing but air that gauzed into green and gold as he ran his hand through where she stood. It was as though he had stepped between a movie projector and the screen. “Are you an illusion, or are you in my head?”

“There is something about this place that prevents me from appearing as fully as I have in the past. And your watchman’s eyes are too sharp to allow me to transport myself entirely. But if you come to me, I will teach you the art of visiting across vast distances. Come to me soon and I will teach you and give you everything you desire.”

“I am to travel to Nornheim as soon as my duties here allow. I will travel in state on a long-overdue diplomatic visit, as an heir of Asgard and—”

“No, that is not the way. If you were to come in full state, I would never be allowed near you. My mistress would never allow it. Your visit must be secret.”

It was odd, how he had thought of her almost not at all the longer he’d spent in New York, and how the air there, sooty as it was, had blown more cleanly through his lungs than it had in the years since he’d returned to Asgard from his multi-realm voyage. But almost immediately, back home again, he felt woozy, muzzy-headed, and faint. As sick as he’d been as a child on days when he and Thor or Bucky had eaten nothing but gooey sweets all day.

This must be what love feels like, he thought. Intoxicating and paralyzing and nauseating. A weight on his mind and his tongue. Love was not very nice, a part of him thought, for he felt as sick as he had as a child. But the poets did speak of pain, so perhaps…

The gauzy air surrounding the image was perfumed with a syrupy sweet sort of smell that Loki closed his eyes and drank in, even though it made him feel even worse. 

Bucky’s voice sounded in his head, as Loki remembered his friend’s concerns as to why this woman spoke to him in riddles. Loki meant to ask, he truly did, but…

“You wouldn’t want to be shut away from me, would you? Not after such a long voyage to see me,” she asked from somewhere around him, inside him. 

He could almost feel a phantom hand on him, teasing… “Of course not,” he gasped pathetically, as though he were an untouched virgin who had not enjoyed Ellison’s company a mere week before. The previous moment’s suspicions dissolved from his mind.

She smiled at him. “Then come in secret, incognito. Tell no one where you are going. Feign interest in another destination. I have utmost faith in your ability to spin tales to those around you. It is a beautiful talent.”

Loki thrilled at the compliment, but felt his tongue thick in his mouth as he tried to respond. What a dunderhead she must think him, more uncouth and unpolished than even Thor. How could he ever hope to woo such a woman when he had such trouble keeping a clear thought in his head around her?

“I will come alone, as a solitary traveler,” he agreed. “Find me when I am near, and lead me to you.”

Loki opened his eyes again when she laughed, a tinkling sound like chimes. She had drawn back again and was fading from view.

“Until soon, sweet prince.”

* * *

Coming home had never been this jarring, but Loki had also never been away for so long. The shock of returning to the very same day that he had left was exacerbated by the months that had elapsed. 

At least he had a voyage to plan for. Two really—one real, one illusory, to fool everyone as to where he was actually going.

“Are you certain you don’t want me to come?” Thor asked a few days before Loki’s scheduled departure.

“What for?”

“So that we can be together, as we always are. And so that I can look after you.”

“We are hardly ‘always together’. And I am much safer without your oafish attempts at protection.”

“I cannot understand why you have changed your mind. Mother and Father are equally baffled by your rashness, Loki. For ages and ages, years and years, you have said nothing but how you long to visit Nornheim, of all places, where there is nothing delicious to eat or drink, nor anyone impressive to fight.”

“How limited and bizarre your idea of a holiday destination is, Thor,” Loki said dryly.

“Why, after all that, have you now decided to visit Alfheim instead?”

“I have already told you, but your mind is apparently a sieve. Vifill has invited me to his sister’s winter cottage. It is very remote. We shall eat pickled meat and practice spellcraft by the fire every day.”

Thor grimaced. “Nothing could induce me to spend my time thus—”

“And yet you will not stop begging to accompany me,” Loki interrupted.

“—except the desire to spend that time with you,” Thor finished. 

Loki pretended to gag, as they had always done as children whenever anyone became soppy. He hid a hint of a fond smile behind the exaggerated movements of his hands.

“You have been strange ever since we returned from our long voyage,” Thor said, turning serious, a mood that little suited him. “Stranger than your usual self. You have grown tall and strong, in your own thin way. No longer ill as you always were. And yet something about you seems even less healthy than before. Something a bit green around the eyes. It only goes away on those odd days when you disappear for hours and hours, and come back forgetful about things we only just talked about in the morning.”

“The great doctor Thor gives a diagnosis. Tell me who granted your medical degree so that I can have their professorship revoked,” Loki said. “Your concern is noted, but unfounded.”

* * *

“What the hell happened?” Bucky asked, months later. He had finally realized Loki was no longer in Brooklyn and had checked the watch.

“I felt a sudden need to return home,” Loki said, not wanting to admit that Steve had driven him back. Indeed, it seemed as though Steve had not mentioned the encounter at all. Bucky made no mention of it. “It matters little. It has only been two days, has it not? There were times when your responsibilities kept us apart for two days even when I was here for all of it.”

“Yeah, I guess so. Still, next time, give me a heads up that you’re leaving, all right?”

Loki leaned against the cool countertop and watched from behind as Bucky spread peanut butter on a piece of bread. The solution to the one lingering problem he faced before his journey occurred to him.

“Bucky…” he said slowly. “I have a rather serious request to ask of you.”

Bucky was too busy opening the sticky jar of jam, not facing Loki, to notice the gravity of Loki’s tone. “Okay. Shoot.”

“I would very much appreciate it if you kissed me.”

Bucky dropped the jar on the counter and spun around.

“What?”

“I want you to kiss me. I want you to show me how this is done.”

Bucky peered at Loki, as though he didn’t believe him.

“Really?” he asked. 

“I wouldn’t have asked otherwise.”

“Not the most romantic way of going about it, but…” Bucky chuckled to himself and crossed the room in less than a second. 

Loki pushed himself out of his leaning position so that they were standing chest to chest. Bucky’s fingers tentatively climbed their way up Loki’s chest before pressing their way to the back of his head. He gently pulled their faces closer. Bucky smiled a daft, lopsided grin that made him look equal parts idiotic and endearing.

“You sure about this?” he whispered, pulling Loki away from the kitchen window. The half-made sandwich lay abandoned on the counter.

Loki shivered, almost too hard to nod a decisive ‘yes’. Bucky took a step even closer until his face was so near that his short exhalations blew hot against Loki’s skin. Unconsciously, Loki tilted his head down a bit, to better meet Bucky’s upturned face. Their foreheads pressed together and their noses brushed. The tingle of it traveled from the point of contact all the way down to Loki’s toes, lingering for a while low in his stomach. 

Yes, this… Asking Bucky for guidance had been a very good idea, Loki thought. They had scarcely yet begun, and already Bucky had taught him how to reduce someone to a jelly. He had always been an excellent teacher, and this was a subject in which he had always vastly eclipsed his friends.

Caressing Loki’s cheek with his thumb, Bucky whispered, “I thought… You’re always talking about that Amora dame.”

It took a couple of embarrassingly aborted attempts, but Loki finally recovered from Bucky’s charm offensive to explain, “Exactly. I seek your advice in case she is vastly more experienced than I. While the mechanics of the central act are familiar to me, I lack practice in the parts that come before. You are the only person I trust to tutor me without teasing.”

Bucky’s thumb ceased tracing Loki’s jawbone. Just before their lips were about to meet, he pulled back. “Wh—what?”

“You said my overture wasn’t sufficiently romantic,” Loki said, eager to move onto the next lesson. “What would have been a better approach?”

“You could ask her if she… you could…” Bucky sputtered. He shook his head and took a few steps backwards, so far that he ran into one of the dining chairs and knocked it over. “I’m sorry, but no.”

“No what?”

“I’m not gonna… I’m not gonna do this.”

Bucky had almost never told him no. In their youth, he’d spent years driving himself into a decline because of his inability to refuse Loki anything. Loki didn’t understand why now, over such an insignificant thing, Bucky had finally decided to deny him.

“Why not?” he asked angrily. “You were game only a moment ago.”

“That was when… I wasn’t thinking. But now I am. And I’m saying no. You shouldn’t… People shouldn’t kiss people who don’t want to kiss them,” Bucky said, with increasing firmness. Then he grimaced, in multiple contortions. “Oh god, and there’s Susan, too. I can’t believe I was gonna… even for a second…”

“But it’s only practice. It doesn’t mean anything!” 

“Yeah. Yeah, I know it doesn’t mean anything.” Bucky wheezed out a strange sort of laugh. “Look, if your girl’s worth it, she won’t mind that you don’t know what you’re doing. You can figure it out together. That’s actually half the fun.”

Loki couldn’t understand why anyone would tolerate a job badly done that could have been prevented with a little practice. He’d always credited Bucky with singular cleverness, but this was the most foolish advice he’d ever heard. Probably because he didn’t mean it. Probably because it was little more than an excuse. Bucky had responded with eagerness in the first second, out of habit; however, upon immediate reflection, he had recoiled. 

It could only mean one thing.

“I know what you are saying. That I, your oldest friend, am so repugnant to you that you cannot countenance the thought, even for practice…”

“No, that’s not…”

“What then?”

“I just can’t.”

“Of everyone I know, I had thought that at least _you_ … Never mind.” 

Loki turned to go—to the other side of the room, to the other side of the universe—but Bucky grabbed his wrist and held him back. 

“Come on, Loki.”

“There is nothing more to say.”

“You don’t have to go. Tell me the plan, at least. Are you going by Bifrost?”

“Of course not,” Loki snapped, still he allowed himself to be held back for some reason. “I told you, this place is part of Asgard, albeit on the other side of the realm. The Bifrost only shuttles people _between_ realms. I will have to ride a long, long road to the other side of the continent, where I will have to barter with a goblin for a place in a chariot across the chasms that connect the various lands of the realm.”

“Just when I think I’ve heard it all, you come out with these things…” If Bucky had been less distraught by whatever was bothering him, he would have laughed. “But why do you have to barter? You’re the prince. Don’t you guys have your own chariot?”

“I am not going as prince. I am going incognito, unbeknownst to anyone in the capital. I have written to Vifill, who, as a good and loyal and helpful friend,” Loki said, silently but forcefully adding ‘unlike you’, “has agreed to pretend I am visiting him. No one will look for me if I am supposed to be in Alfheim.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. He had heard the bait and refused to take it. “But why? Why pretend to be somewhere else?”

“It was Amora’s request that I come alone and unbeknownst to anyone at home.”

“Because that doesn’t sound fishy at all. I thought this was going to be your big chance to prove to everybody that you would make a good king. A big diplomatic mission all on your own. You’re gonna throw that away just for some dame who…”

Feeling irrationally defensive, and fighting a tiny, muffled part of him that knew Bucky’s suspicions were not ill founded, Loki belated snatched his hand out of Bucky’s grasp. “You complain, and yet she has promised to teach me how to travel more easily between the realms. Is this not your dearest wish? A way to visit Asgard? Should you not encourage me to follow her wishes?”

“Don’t pretend this trip has anything to do with me.”

Except that it had, in fact. It always had, although, in case of failure, Loki had kept his plans and hopes to himself. He did not want a repeat of what had happened with the potion. He had decided to call upon the Norns during his stay in their land for guidance in solving the problems that loomed over his visits here.

But now, angry and hurt and rejected, he began to question whether or not he should bother. 

“I have matters to attend to back in Asgard. I will signal upon my return, whenever that may be.”

Loki summoned the shadow portal and returned to the cave, so abruptly that Bucky’s mumbled, “See ya, Loki” was cut off in the middle.

The next morning, he kissed his mother goodbye and bowed low in farewell to Odin. 

“Enjoy your holiday, dearest,” Frigga said. “I hope it restores you, for you have not been at all yourself as of late, and I worry for your health.”

“I have never felt better, Mother,” Loki lied.

“Give the king in Alfheim my greetings,” Odin added. “It has been long since last we met.”

“I will do so, Father,” Loki replied. 

Halfway to the Bifrost, he activated the immersive illusion he had spent months preparing—his most impressive and corporeal-seeming yet—and became invisible. He watched his false double ride among the company assigned to escort him to Alfheim.

Finally alone, he picked up his traveling bags from where he had left them in a dug out crevice behind the palace walls.

Fearing that Heimdall might see him and realize that it was not Loki who was even now being beamed to Alfheim by the Bifrost, he planned to remain invisible for as much of the long journey as he could.


	14. Chapter 14

Unlike most Asgardians, Loki had never been able to grow a beard. Thor, who might as well have been a mammoth, had always teased him about it. In retaliation, Loki had been known to enchant Thor’s beard and hair into the delicate braids preferred by elder dowagers at court. 

Most people would have lost track of time during the long trudge through the featureless wilderness that separated Nornheim from the rest of the Asgardian realm. But Loki had spent at least half his life uniquely attuned to the passage of time. He knew, without needing to reference his watch, that he had been walking through this barren, not-quite terrain for two years, three months, and twelve days. 

He’d been traveling without access to implements or the comforts of grooming for over two years, and had not even a shadow to show for it. This made his current appearance—filthy, overgrown locks, patches of red heat rash—strange. (Or so he assumed, though he had no mirror to confirm.) For who had ever seen a hobo with a perfectly shaved face? He’d also been subsisting entirely on food he’d stored in magical pockets of space. It was enough to keep him going, but not enough to keep him hale; he’d grown even skinner during this journey.

Perhaps it was the solitude, or perhaps it was something else, but he could feel his mind slipping into nonsensical thoughts and strange connections. A part of him kept wanting to turn back and go home, but Amora visited him from time to time, appearing and encouraging him to keep moving, no matter how tired and resistant his body felt, no matter how lonely during the long, long weeks between apparitions. Always encouraging, but never drawing close enough or being real enough to kiss. Loki felt dizzier and hungrier with each visit.

This was a far cry from Vifill’s pleasure estate in remote Vídbláin, which was where he’d told everyone he was going. 

Today, he came upon an invisible fence. In truth, he almost tripped over it, which he would never have come close to doing had he been in full possession of his strength. If Queen Karnilla wanted to keep her dominion separate and protect the Norns from outsiders, she was certainly doing a masterful job. Powerful old wards lined the border, each mile sporting a different, even more imaginatively conceived booby-trap than the last.

Loki had to sit for an hour in order to draw up the necessary energy to cast the counter-spell. A few hours walk later, he veered towards the left, as the old maps he had consulted in the library at home had instructed him to do at this point.

As if sensing this, Amora appeared beside him. As always, Loki immediately glamored his unsightly appearance away, and hoped he’d done it quickly enough for her not to have seen.

“This is not the correct path,” she said. 

“I have a stop to make on the way.”

“This is hardly the single-minded devotion I had hoped for.”

“It is but a short detour,” he tried to bargain, and it took some effort to do so.

Amora’s beautiful face crinkled into a dangerous frown, an expression that was almost ugly, and which disappeared in an instant, so quickly that Loki must have imagined it. 

“What could you possibly need to do that takes precedence? Was this journey not undertaken solely to see me?”

Loki waged war against himself. “I won’t be long,” he finally said.

She disappeared in a huff, leaving him feeling fuzzy and regretful.

It was odd, actually, how hard he had to work to stay on course—his own course. The single-minded devotion was mostly there, save for a small part of his heart or his reason that poked at him and refused to be washed over by the heady feeling that must have been love. It would have been so easy to follow her voice, to follow the pleasantly perfumed shadow, and skip his intended detour. But friendship, Loki was learning, was apparently a more tenacious sentiment than desire, for it kept asserting itself.

* * *

The way to the most sacred part of these lands was guarded with even more wards than Karnilla’s borders. But either the magic had grown old, or else the Norns wanted Loki to visit, for he had little trouble moving past them. Yggdrasil’s roots began to show themselves as delicate tendrils peeking out of the hard soil. As Loki walked beside them, they grew to the size of enormous sea serpents, winding in and out of the soil.

Loki had read of an entrance, but it would not be near the sacred trunk, so wide around that his eyes could not make out the diameter. He followed a bluish root that seemed to glow at him in indication of the way. At its highest point sat an old, scarred circle of bark. Loki pressed on it and whispered ancient promises of good faith. The gnarled knot sank into the root, leaving an opening so small that Loki had to crawl on hands and knees to enter. Perhaps it had been made with dwarves in mind. Either that or the Norns demanded that whoever came to visit showed proper reverence. If the latter was their aim, they forced quite a lot of reverence out of Loki as he made his painful way along the hollow root. 

At one point, the root made a sharp right angle downwards. It sent Loki into a free-fall that lasted some of the longest seconds of his life. Once he landed, aching and winding and cursing, the way became easier. He had to stoop a little, but was finally able to walk instead of crawl.

He walked for what felt like hours—for what probably _was_ hours, in complete darkness. None of his usual light spells worked here. Magic did not work here, he discovered. There was hardly enough air to breathe, and he kept bumping into bits of root in the darkness, but he felt strangely more clear-headed than he had outside.

He was still walking in the dark when he heard voices.

“Exactly on time,” a raspy-sounding female announced.

“Everything happens on time,” another, grumpier, voice said next.

“She was only trying to bid him some sort of welcome, sister,” a third, sweeter voice explained.

They were still squabbling when Loki turned a corner and entered a high, wide dome. The floor was a tapestry of tiny roots, curved and curled over one another, and covered with a damp carpet of moss. Loki could see no lamps, but the place was as brightly lit as a summer morning, all the way to the ceiling, which was equally mossy. Thick, braided roots intertwined with the finest threads imaginable cascaded down at random around the space. Unexpected flowers sprouted at odd angles and from odd crevices. Various pools had settled around where clumps of the threads and roots met the mossy floor.

Three women of indeterminate age—at first glance, they looked like elderly old crones, while at the second, they seemed more beautiful than Hedy Lamarr—were engaged in various tasks. One spun thread, another watered the flowers from a gleaming chalice, and the third poked at a nearby tapestry.

“Hello,” Loki said, after a few moments of being ignored.

“We already bid you a welcome. Do not be so greedy as to demand a second one,” the spinner said.

“His kind think greetings must be done face to face,” replied the more generous one who had explained before. 

The weaver looked up from her tapestry. Her long, tangled hair shifted as she moved. Loki saw that she had a third eye, piercing and clear, nestled at the center of her forehead.

“His kind is one thing,” she said, inspecting him. “Or is it two?”

“Never mind his kind, sister,” the spinner argued. “What matters is _him_ , and he is a greedy sort. Are you not, princeling? For you come here to ask things of us. Questions and tokens both. You, who already have so much, more than you deserve. Still, you want more.”

Loki cleared his throat and summoned his courage. If anyone had the right to stand in this cave with his back straight, it was he, a son of Odin. He would not be cowed by natterings and pricklings, not even from three of the most venerated (not to mention rudest), beings in the universe. 

“I am indeed here to ask a boon,” he said.

“And what have you brought us in return?”

“They never bring us anything,” the spinner complained. “They never think to. Greedy ingrates.”

“They believe us to have all we need, sister,” the weaver almost sang as she passed the loom through the threads she was forging together.

“How can that be? They live in palaces heated by the stars, while we sit here and watch the world go by solely through your ugly tapestry.”

“It is a beautiful tapestry!”

Loki ignored them. He had done his reading and mastered his lore. He had known better than to come empty-handed. He withdrew a cloth bag from his shirt.

“But I _have_ brought you gifts,” he said. 

The gardener set down her golden chalice and minced over to him. She opened the sack and fingered the little pyramids of silver foil wrapping that began to pour into her hand. 

“What are they?” she asked.

“Kisses. In truth, I often prefer this kind. Chocolate is sweeter, more honest, and reliably delicious. Unlike the people connected to the lips of real ones.”

He showed her how to peel the wrapping and mimed that she should pop it into her mouth. Her face brightened.

“It _is_ nice!” she exclaimed. “Sisters, come see!”

The others came over and each tried one.

“What else does he have for us?” the spinner said with her mouth full.

Loki next pulled out a plastic tube. “This is a kaleidoscope. It shows you sights of the outside world. It is but a toy, but it is a pretty one.” He put it near the weaver’s third eye and spun it so she could see.

“These gifts do not come from Asgard,” she said. 

“I thought that, as you live in Asgard, these might prove more interesting to you.”

“No, liesmith, you thought this an easy way to broach the topic about which you wish to ask.”

“So, go on, out with it,” the spinner said.

“Why should I bother, when it seems you already know the subject?” Loki grumbled. 

They began to talk at once, over and around one another.

“He wants to step out of the shadow that shrouds him.” 

“We cannot help with that.”

“Not when it was he who placed himself there.”

“But this is not all he wants, is it?”

“So greedy he is.”

“I am in the room. You can address me directly,” Loki snapped, half out of annoyance at their mannerisms and half out of disappointment that they could not help with the first of his requests. He salvaged his courage and hoped they may prove of use for the second.

“You seek a remedy for mortality,” the weaver said, getting straight to the heart of the matter.

“For your precious human.”

“As though mortality were a disease to be cured.”

Loki ignored their mocking tone. He had long known that what he treasured was, to the eyes of everyone around him, beneath him. He’d made his peace with it ages ago by telling himself that they were all fools incapable of seeing the proper worth of things. Just as everyone failed to see his worth.

So, he drew himself up straight and looked at them defiantly. “Yes, that is so. I want to know how to make someone like myself.”

They laughed, all three of them. 

“No, princeling, that is the last thing you want.”

“Do not presume to tell me what I want,” Loki snapped. 

“Well, someone has to, since you cannot see it for yourself.”

“Enough of these riddles,” Loki tried again to demand. “Can be done? Tell me and I will be on my way. Can a human become an Aesir? Or something like enough to keep pace with me?”

“It can be done,” the weaver said. “There are a few ways. The most efficient for you would be via the apples reaped from the garden of Idunn. To one of the Elder races, it is merely a sweet fruit. But to others, it bestows the longevity and hardiness suffered by the Aesir, the Vanir, the Elves, and the Jotun.”

Loki could not imagine why she had chosen the word “suffer” to describe such a state. But never mind. He remembered this fruit well. Mother sometimes received baskets of them from the Lady Idunn, who was required every so often to pay tribute to her queen. Loki had loved the sweet treats and had taken more than his fair share to hide away in his room, only to find that they had rotted far sooner than normal fruit did. 

“In order to harness this property,” the gardener said, as she returned to her watering, “the fruit must be consumed in Asgard.”

Loki’s mind whirred. The challenge that had thwarted him since childhood stood in the way.

As if hearing the despair that immediately flared in Loki’s mind, the spinner said, “And therefore, you will next ask for the means of piercing the twin veils of time and space.”

“A new way,” the weaver clarified. “He always has one, though it is limited.” 

“But how? How can I do it? I have tried, you cannot imagine how many times.”

The weaver gripped Loki’s elbow. Sadly, she said, “Then stop trying. Abandon this future, this path you have begun to forge. Relinquish your dreams, princeling. Let them go, lest they transform into your worst nightmare.”

“Prince of everywhere, king of nothing,” the spinner goaded. 

“What does that mean?” Loki snapped. Nothing they had said made any sense, but finally, they had struck the nerve they’d been looking for.

“You are supposed to be so clever, and yet you cannot see past the end of your nose.”

“He cannot see his nose at all!”

They all laughed. Again. Loki knew he was here to ask for a favor, so he restrained his temper, even though he wanted to scream at them. 

“Let me get a better look at you, princeling,” the gardener said, beckoning to him with a hand. She took a long look at him, and then went walking through different bundles of roots and threads. Having apparently found the one she was looking for, she thrust her hand into a clump, felt around, and pulled one out. Without knowing how far up it reached, there was no way for Loki to estimate how long it was.

But he longed to know.

While he looked and longed, she rattled off a number of years, months and days, finishing with, “And yet you are so young.”

Loki frowned. “Is that supposed to be my age? I think you’ll find your counting a little off. While close, I am not quite so old.”

At this, the three women began talking over one another again.

“The threads never lie.”

“He thought he could cheat time.”

“Such arrogance.”

“What do you mean?” Loki asked, his head spinning almost as rapidly as the thread on the nearby spindle. He was not accustomed to being talked over in such a fashion.

“Thinking you could slip through time, escape it. But no, you drag it with you, slower than blood.” 

An inkling of what they meant began to take shape in Loki’s mind. He went cold with horror at the notion. His first response was denial. “But I always return at exactly the moment I left.”

“That does not mean no time has passed.”

“Every hour you spend there—every hour that you spend _then_ —counts in multiples. A calculation with which you are well familiar. A day spent there is the equivalent of months spent in Asgard. Months that are taken off your life.”

“You lie,” Loki whispered, as the full weight of the information weighed down on him.

“At this rate,” the spinner jeered, “your elder brother may one day become your younger.” 

Loki backed up so far that he collided with a falling root and practically tripped over it. As the Norns laughed at him, he thought of all the time he had wasted. All the times he had made sure to come on a Tuesday so that he could hear the latest installment of his favorite radio drama. The afternoons he had spent whiling away in cafes or taking aimless walks while Bucky was at work. The rainy evenings filled with nothing but talk. Enjoyable, companionable talk, but idle chitchat all the same.

He had been wasting his life, cutting his thread shorter with each visit. 

Although… What was he doing in Asgard that was so much more valuable? Days, weeks, years full of monotony and bitterness. Did they count for more than a few pleasant afternoons?

He didn’t know what to think. 

“I will give you what you need, Loki,” the gardener whispered while the others continued to laugh. “We were always going to provide, but my sisters wanted to tease you first.”

He was only only half listening, too busy counting the difference in days between her calculations and his understood age, too busy weighing the value of two countings of time. 

“Why?” he choked out. “Why tease if you were always going to comply?”

“They tease because they lack access to other amusement. Few visit us, you see. Few dare. It takes great desperation of purpose to bring a man or woman here. They tease so that you can understand the gravity of what you desire. So that you can see the difficulty of the path you chose so long ago. For you _did_ choose it. The universe deigned to show you something, to show you a possibility. But it was you who continued to seek it out, who even now refuse to let it go.” She reached into the folds of her robe and pulled out a knife wrapped in an old cloth that was covered with ancient scribblings. “If properly incanted, the spell written here will grant this knife the ability to cut the path you desire. You can bring whomever you choose with you. But only one return voyage per user. After that, only he whom we deem next in line can wield it.”

Loki ran his fingers over the worn metal hilt of the knife. Engravings older than any he had ever seen had been all but rubbed out. “Thank you,” he said. “This is a precious gift. What is it that I must promise you in return? Surely, such a treasure must come with a steep price.”

“It does,” she said, almost sadly. 

“But what is this price?” Loki asked.

“The universe always exacts its recompense, without always informing the players. He who does not want to pay need only keep the knife in a drawer and never use it.”

“I cannot imagine any price steeper than losing to old age and death that which I hold dear. And now that I know, I cannot imagine a price steeper than continuing in an arrangement which will hasten the same result for myself.”

The three Norns looked at one another, their expressions sad.

Then the knife vanished from Loki’s grasp. 

“Where did it go? Is this a trick?” he asked, clawing at the air around him. He suspected that they had meant only to taunt him. They had already teased enough for this to be a logical assumption.

“We have sent it away for safekeeping. It would not do for such a treasure to fall into the wrong hands. You will find it if and when you are at leisure to want it.”

“Whose hands?” Loki asked. “What hands other than mine would touch it? Do you think I would be so careless with your gifts?”

Instead of answering, the weaver placed a hand on his shoulder. “Farewell, princeling. Thank you for the kisses. And the kaleidoscope.”

* * *

It took Loki many painful hours to crawl back through the tunnel and back to the surface. The climb back up the drop he had fallen through was a particular hardship. However, the silent, distraction-free darkness allowed him time to enjoy the clarity afforded by this magic-dampened environment. 

He thought first about the revelations he had just learned about his time in New York. Far from being put off by their vague foreboding, the knowledge only increased Loki’s resolve to use the knife, get Bucky this fruit, and begin a new chapter. He was certain Bucky would agree. For was he not as terrified of the potential time switch as Loki was of snipping off his life’s thread? Would he not jump at any opportunity to improve the situation and remain with Loki forever? No matter the price?

Loki told himself the answer would be yes.

But there was more occupying his thoughts than just this task. As he crawled on bony palms and knees, hitting his head on the hard ceiling of root, Loki noticed how, for the first time in longer than he could remember, he had not thought of Amora at all. Indeed, he had to remind himself that he was not about to turn around and head home, mission accomplished. He had entirely forgotten that he was here for another reason. The dizziness that had muffled his reason and wobbled his motions for so long was gone, but now, here, in a place with no magic, Loki could see it—could interpret its absence—for what it was. An enchantment. A rather powerful one. And he was its pathetic victim. 

He worked through everything he had thought and felt and experienced since visiting Midgard with Thor. He compared how well he felt now to how strangely he had felt for so long. He kicked himself on purpose almost as hard as his ankle accidentally kicked the narrow confines of the root. He thought of Thor’s speech to him on the subject of this trip. He thought of Bucky’s wariness of Amora. They, two men unschooled in magic, had seen the trap Loki had fallen into. They had not known what it was, but they’d still seen what Loki, the accomplished sorcerer, had been too blind to divine. 

This was never love. 

He worked it out just as he reached the surface. 

An army was there to greet him. There were a hundred warriors, men and women alike, all riding magnificent steeds and clad in finely wrought armour. They had surrounded the entrance to the tree, leaving Loki no hope for escape.

Amora rode at their head. It was the first time Loki had seen her in person, in the flesh. She was even more golden and beautiful than he had thought before, but now, her beauty left him cold. 

She must have been able to read in Loki’s expression that the game was up. Now that he was outside the magic-free zone of the root system, he could feel the tendrils of her spell clawing towards him again, but it was a mere taunt, simply a proof of what she had done and could do. 

“You lingered too long, my love,” she said archly, lingering sarcastically on the last words, as Loki might have done in a similar situation. “I brought you a welcome party.” She nodded at the line of soldiers behind her. “Seize him.”

Loki had met his match. His struggles accomplished nothing. 

He was seized.


	15. Chapter 15

Loki had been in this cell for well over a year. One year, eight months, and sixteen days ago, to be exact, all after a painful, month-long march from the Norns’ home to Karnilla’s palace. Loki had counted each and every one of those days by watching the thin sliver of daylight that slipped into his dungeon through a crack near the ceiling. All that time, his mouth had been gagged, his feet tied together, and his hands had remained bound behind his back with thin, magic-reinforced ropes.

Guards opened the door once a day to slide a metal bowl of soup across the floor. The five minutes they allotted him for eating it were the only minutes in the day when the gag was untied. As though Loki had not been humiliated enough, they watched as he lowered his head to the bowl like a beast to eat. They kept a mage with them to block his magic and ensure that he did not attempt to whisper the words to any spell.

Other than the guards in charge of feeding him and cleaning his filth, no one had come to visit him in all this time. Not Queen Karnilla, nor even Amora. 

At first, he’d told himself that he would not be here long. He would devise a plan. They would come to him with questions, and he would use those questions to learn answers that would aid in the plotting of his escape. However, after months of solitude had elapsed, he’d had to admit that he had not been taken for information. 

He sometimes overheard the guards talking amongst themselves, scraps of conversation while opening or closing the heavy cell door. Over many months, he pieced these half-heard words together to glean that messengers had been sent to Odin to make demands in exchange for Loki’s release.

The journey from here to the capital, as Loki well knew, was a long one, which meant that he would be here for some time longer. But the knowledge that something was happening cheered him. Father would, at the very least, negotiate for his son’s freedom. More likely, he would wage terrifying war against this rebellious subject-queen and raze her palace to the ground for daring to hold a son of Asgard. 

Loki whiled the time away imagining himself standing in front of the palace, triumphant. He lulled himself to sleep at nights thinking of his revenge upon everyone who had played a part in his captivity.

* * *

Yet another year passed, and still nothing happened. Loki tried to tell himself that it was taking time for Odin to gather his armies. Perhaps another war had broken out to divide the forces. He tried to rationalize all the possible reasons for this delay. Only something world-shaking could prevent the All-Father from reclaiming Loki from the traitors who had taken him.

The grumblings from the guards increased, but too indistinctly for Loki to decipher them.

He feared he was going mad.

* * *

One day, finally, Amora entered the cell along with a stern-faced, richly dressed woman of about Frigga’s age. Loki had not met her before being marched into the dungeon, but this had to be Queen Karnilla. 

“Why does the All-Father refuse our terms?” Karnilla asked without any introduction. “Why does he refuse to treat with us? We, who hold his own son?”

She ripped the gag from his mouth to allow him to answer.

“Why treat with those whom he means to crush?” Loki snarled, voice cracking from disuse.

“For a man planning to crush us, he gathers no army,” Amora said. “He makes no plans for attack. He makes no moves or plans at all. I have visited the palace, in the manner that I visited you so often. I have slipped into his council meetings unawares. Never once has he spoken of you. There are no hired messengers or lone mercenaries along the roads. Why? Why does he do nothing?”

Loki kept his face still, but his heart sank at these words. He could tell from Amora’s frustration that she did not lie. No one was coming for him.

“I would not be so foolish as to tell you,” he spat, hoping that he could dissemble despite the weakened state in which this long captivity had left him. “The All-Father has all means at his disposal. You will not know when or how or where the attack will come, but come it will.”

“I see through your mask, Trickster. You know of no secret options. Your fear is palpable. I can smell it even over your general stench.” She turned to her mistress. “If this worthless fool cannot serve as we had hoped, let me claim him. Should another year pass in this state of impasse, I claim the right to do with him as I please.”

“Claim him? But if his own father will not ransom him, then he is as worthless as you say. Surely you cannot want him as a—”

“As a lover?” Amora laughed, and at the sound, hatred and humiliation bubbled in Loki violently enough to choke. “Who could ever want him? Especially after having looked upon his brother? No, I want him for the only thing he is good for. To drain what magic he possesses and put it to greater use than he ever could. To make him tell me how he sometimes manages to disappear from reality entirely, even if only for a second. For that is a promising line of magical knowledge. Once I have these things, he can die.”

She looked at Loki in a carnivorous manner that brought to mind insects he had read about centuries ago, in one of Bucky's natural history schoolbooks. Long, thin, green vermin who ate their prey after mating. Except in this case, there would not even be any mating involved.

“No words for us, sweet prince? Silver tongue tarnished?” she sneered, knowing that Loki could not reply. 

“We will send one more missive,” Karnilla said. “If that fails, then yes. You may have him, and I will have the pleasure of depriving Frigga of her son.”

Amora smiled, and it would have been indistinguishable from the polite, controlled smiles of well-bred ladies at court if not for the heavy-lidded hunger radiating from her eyes above. Loki recognized it, uncomfortably, as similar to the smile he wore during moments of underhanded triumph, the expression Thor and Bucky had always deemed his ugliest. But today, he had no desire to appear comely, so he smiled right back.

“So impotent in his defiance,” she cooed. “He's almost adorable.”

“Don't taunt your prey so,” Karnilla said. “It is unbecoming.”

Amora frowned at the rebuke, and fired such a look when Karnilla's back was turned that Loki could almost see the future, a future in which Amora may one day outstrip, betray, and usurp her.

If Loki didn’t destroy them first, both of them.

After they’d gone, he saw that a pin had fallen out of Karnilla’s excessively trussed gown. He pushed himself over to it until his bound hands had it in their grasp. It was a small pin, and not very sharp, but Loki had time and will and hatred on his side.

He needed to get out of this cell. And now that it seemed Father was not on his way, Loki knew he must do it himself.

* * *

It took weeks of patiently picking at the bonds on his wrists, but the wait only served to increase his anger and desperation—exactly the intensity of emotion needed to cast the sort of magic he needed. As he’d grown up, his ability to corral the kind of genuine, uncontrolled feeling that had so long ago led to such extraordinary magic had lessened. He was too rational now, too calculating, too aware of his own power to rouse such power. 

But now… Now the emotions were neither forced nor fabricated. His family had failed him, had left him to rot in this prison. All the fears he had struggled with his whole life—that he was less valued than Thor, that he truly was worthless, unwanted, and unloved—returned, strengthened by this new evidence. 

Even before he had fully frayed the bonds, he began directing all of his available magic to his fingers. Loki didn’t care who should come, only that someone—preferably someone of great power—would rescue him. He smashed his head against the rough stone wall until blood stained it red. When there was enough, he shuffled himself around and coated his fingers in it. When it began to dry, he repeated the process to coat his hands further.

His lips were unable to form the words, but he cast the spells from his very depths, accessing a well of power he had not felt since he was an uncontrolled little boy. He turned to dark magic that he should not have known. Spells he had copied out of a book in a forbidden, restricted section of the library in Vanaheim, while Vifill had stood by, shaking with fear. Summoning spells that would call people from anywhere—from Hel itself—to the sorcerer’s side and cause. 

He switched back and forth between two different ones, each embellishing and empowering the other. In some moments, he called upon ancient magic that would bring those bound to him by shared blood. In other moments, Loki prayed to the universe as he had done that day, so long ago. But this time, he wished for the universe to send the greatest warrior ever known to his aid. 

His eyes fluttered shut with the effort and his frantic fingers accidentally snapped the pin before it had fully broken the bonds. But this setback only increased his desperation, and with it, the strength of his silent spell casting. 

A few minutes later, an unaccustomed sound—like a plop—caused Loki to reopen his eyes. Before him stood a man. Tall and broad, his strength was visible even under the layers of strangely fashioned leather he wore, as well as harder protective materials Loki didn’t recognize. A combination of eye armour, mask, and messy dark hair covered his face. But his most salient feature—his most impressive—was a beautifully crafted metal arm that gleamed as bright as Odin’s sword. He was covered in the filth and glow of battle. Each of his hands held a knife, both dripping with blood. 

Loki marveled at this splendid specimen. No wonder the universe itself had deemed him the greatest warrior in existence. He was altogether the ideal.

The warrior was staring, transfixed and understandably confused, at both Loki and these new surroundings. Loki grunted and shifted to show the bonds at his feet and behind his back. The warrior paused, still questioning where he was and why, but he knelt beside Loki and began cutting with one of his bloody knives. 

As soon as his hands were free, Loki rushed to loosen the gag. 

“I am Loki, son of Odin, heir to the Realm Eternal. You shall be amply rewarded for having come to my aid.” 

At the warrior’s lack of response, it occurred to Loki that perhaps he was wrong to assume the warrior was Aesir, or even a foreigner fluent in their tongue. For in truth, now that he was looking more closely, this warrior’s build and colouring looked more Vanaheimian than anything else. 

He was about to repeat his speech in the All-Speak, but the warrior spoke first, in toneless, accentless, slightly halting Asgardian—as though he himself knew not what language he was speaking.

“Do I know you? Are you a new handler?” 

The warrior’s voice sent shivers up Loki’s spine, though he could not pinpoint why.

“I doubt we have met before. I would have remembered meeting one such as you.” Loki looked at the metal arm, which whirred and purred prettily in motion. “But it was I who summoned you. Will you continue the work you have started and secure my escape?”

“Is that my mission?” the warrior asked in the same disconcertingly bland tone.

Despite his fearsome appearance, the man was rather simple, Loki thought. Perhaps he compensated for brainpower with brawn. It was a way of living that worked well enough for some people. It worked well enough for Thor.

Speaking of which, a rustling noise alerted them to another presence in the cell. Loki spun his head around just as the warrior lifted one of his knives. 

Thor lay sleeping (and snoring, a bit) in a dark corner of the cell. His head rested on Mjolnir.

Loki grinned, not only out of fondness at the sight of his brother, but also in triumph. Not just one, but both spells had worked. He had called upon blood, and blood had come.

“Thor?” Loki called, but Thor had always slept like the dead. Loki tried to go to him, but stumbled on the way. He was still winded from the effort of having cast the spells and weak in general from his long and sedentary captivity. He turned to the warrior and ordered, “Wake him. You asked what your mission is. It is to facilitate my escape from this place. Waking this man is the first step.” 

The warrior nodded and went over to where Thor lay. He shook him by the shoulder, with increasing roughness until Thor woke, gasping. At the sight of a stranger before him, he began to struggle.

“Stay your hand, Thor,” Loki called. “He is an ally.”

“Brother?”

Thor scrambled to Loki’s side and hugged him, breath reeking with wine from the night before. Loki was too weak to pretend to push him away, and instead let himself be held. After this long alone, and without wine, he welcomed Thor’s weight and stench.

“Where am I?” Thor asked. “Am I dreaming, that I have already reached the end of my journey?”

“What journey?” 

“The one I set out on three days ago. They kept the news from me. Only last week, I overheard two of the councilors whispering about the situation. That was how I learned that you were not in Alfheim with Vifill at all, but rather, had been captured in Nornheim. Father forbade me to leave, but I could not know you to be a prisoner and do nothing about it. I have been using a charm Mother gave me to hide my appearance. I had stopped for the night in a tavern. How is it that I am now here, with you?”

Loki wanted to laugh at the thought of Thor doing anything incognito. But he was too relieved to hear this tale—unprompted and obviously true—of Thor’s continued devotion, as well as his mother’s. They had not left him to rot. 

“I summoned you,” he replied. “I called upon the power of blood as well as the greatest warrior in existence. Both of you stand before me.”

Thor frowned at the warrior. Loki smiled to see his brother jealous for the first time in his life. 

“I expect you to fight for my brother ferociously enough to prove yourself worthy of this designation,” Thor said, with more grace than Loki had expected.

There was another pause as the man gathered whatever wits he possessed for a response. “I have never failed a mission,” he finally said, in his ever-halting and inflectionless Asgardian. He paused again, and then repeated a previous question. “Do I know you?”

Thor glanced at Loki, questioning. Loki shrugged. He found the man bizarre as well, but as long as he could fight, he cared little.

Loki heard noise in the hall. The time for his feeding was near. “They are coming. There are usually five of them. If we can surprise them, we can escape while the door is still open. After these, there will be more.”

“Let them come,” Thor said. “I have been thirsting for this battle since first I heard the news of your capture.”

The soldier’s only response was to toss Loki a knife. Loki loosely replaced his gag and held his hands behind him as though they were still bound, with the knife between his palms. Loki’s muscles were not accustomed to movement, and his body was drained from the exertion of magic, but he rallied his last reserves of strength for the fight.

It all happened with satisfying swiftness. As soon as the door opened, the soldier garroted one guard with a string that came out of seemingly nowhere, while Loki took threw the knife into the mage’s throat. Thor felled both of his guards with one swipe of Mjolnir, and the warrior dispatched the last guard with a knife to the heart. Together, the three of them strode out of the cell and faced the remaining guards in the hall. 

The sound of the fighting roused the entire palace, and soon they faced almost a full army. Thor and Loki had fought together their whole lives, on the practice fields and in tournaments and even in a few real battles. Their rhythm had been honed over a lifetime. What was surprising, however, was how quickly the stranger fell into synch with them, as though he had trained with them, too. Indeed, he seemed to have had at least some similar training. The man wielded his knife in the style of the Vanaheimian fencing master who had taught Thor and Loki when they were young. He flipped his knife with the same twist of the wrist before going in for the kill. He was every bit as impressive in action as Loki had hoped for.

Thor, too, fought as he never had before, and, in Loki’s opinion, almost outshone the warrior. He racked up a much higher number of kills as they made their way out of the dungeons and into the sunshine. But that was most likely because Thor fought out of a love for family, Loki thought, and not for a stranger. It may also have been because the warrior was too busy protecting Loki to focus fully on attacking. He spent almost more time covering Loki than fighting, supporting and helping him as they made their way through the crush of guards.

Loki had memorized the layout of the grounds on his brief march to the dungeons. He led their little group to the stables and cast a spell that sent every horse but the three best into an unshakable slumber.

Thor climbed onto a white stallion’s back, and Loki leaped onto an already saddled black charger, but the warrior hesitated.

“Now!” Thor yelled. “Why do you hold back?”

“I don’t know how to ride.”

Thor and Loki gaped at one another. The man had been adept at everything, a master of every weapon available, navigating and overcoming every thorny situation in a desperate fight. After such a display as he had given them, they had not imagined him ignorant of such a basic skill.

With the guards still coming, Loki allowed himself no more than a moment to feel surprised. He enchanted the third horse so that it fell to the ground with the rest, and stretched out a hand. “Then you must ride with me.”

The man was broader than Loki, and the warmth of him enveloped Loki as he sat close behind, chest pressing against Loki’s back. Loki must have been touch-starved indeed, because this stranger’s closeness felt almost as welcome and familiar as his own brother’s embrace had earlier. 

Loki spurred his horse to a gallop in time with Thor’s. On their way, they saw Karnilla and Amora standing in their path. Their hands were outstretched and their lips mumbled spells.

They were looking straight at Thor. Suddenly, Loki understood their purpose.

“Keep Mjolnir close! Bind it to you and do not engage!” he cried. 

“But—”

“For once, do as I say, brother! It is you they want. You and your hammer.” Loki only needed to turn his head a fraction to speak to the warrior, because the man’s chin all but rested on his shoulder. “Can your aim reach them?”

He need not have bothered to ask. From somewhere on his person, the warrior had already pulled out something that looked half like a large slingshot and half like a small crossbow. Loki didn’t know where he kept all these weapons, nor why they looked so foreign, like nothing he had ever seen. With perfect precision and speed, even despite the rocking gallop of the horse, he shot first at Karnilla, hitting her in the heart, and then at Amora. Loki could not see where exactly the deadly pellet hit, but she fell as well.

“Your aim is impressive,” Loki shouted.

“The second wasn’t as good as the first.” And then, “Where are we?” Confusion was more audible in his voice now. There was a touch more inflection than there had been before when he repeated, yet again, “Do I know you?”

But Loki was nearing the end of what little strength that remained to him, and had no time for the man’s questions. Without horses, the guards could not chase, but Loki and his friends hadn’t yet ridden out of the reach of the archers. An arrow struck Loki in the leg. Thor roared in rage almost as loudly as Loki did in pain, but there was nothing they could do but keep going. Loki gripped the reins even harder, and tried to forget the pain by focusing all his energy into directing the horse. The warrior pulled the arrow out and threw it behind them. He kept his hand pressed firmly on Loki’s thigh to stem the blood loss, and held Loki tightly so that he would not faint and fall.

They rode for as long as the horses could take them before collapsing. All the while, the soldier pressed himself—hand and body both—even more firmly into Loki, and nosed hesitantly, wonderingly at Loki’s shoulder. Every so often he would pull his face back slightly to get a better look at Loki’s face, before almost nuzzling him again.

“Be still! Your movements distract the horse,” Loki eventually snapped, more because the warrior’s overly familiar behavior discomfited _him_ than because it interfered with his riding. And yet, for some reason, he immediately regretted his harsh tone—he, who regretted almost nothing and apologized to almost no one. He regretted his words, too, when the warrior sat back a bit, and loosened his hold on Loki’s torso. More gently, he continued, “I will answer your questions soon.”

When they did stop, Thor helped the warrior out of the saddle and then Loki, who was now falling prey to the exhaustion he had so far staved off. The warrior ripped a piece of cloth from the end of Thor’s cape and began tying Loki’s leg, looking up into his face all the while.

“They did not feed you enough, if they fed you at all,” Thor fretted. “You are skinnier than I have ever seen you. And paler, which I had not thought possible. I should not have listened to you. I should have killed the perpetrators with my own hands. I wish I had known the truth sooner. I should have come for you before this.”

“You came, and that is what matters. What did it feel like when I summoned you?” Loki turned to the warrior as well. “For both of you.”

“Well, I was asleep, so I felt nothing at all,” Thor said. 

“I was on a boat,” the man baldly, still stuttering through Asgardian words. “Had just finished eliminating my targets. I blacked out. I don’t usually wake up outside of the chair. This entire mission has been an aberration. The briefing was inadequate.”

Thor glanced at Loki after this strange speech. Not even Loki quite knew what to say. 

“You… he’s been calling you Thor,” the warrior said. “Thor. That’s… You’re…” 

He looked between them, struggling on the edge of something that neither Loki nor Thor could guess, especially since they could not see his face to read the accompanying expression. But his voice was becoming richer, more awake. And for the first time, Loki almost believed him, almost thought there was a chance they had met before. There was something in his voice… Loki was about to ask the man to remove his mask, but Thor interrupted. 

“All that matters is that today I find myself in your debt. You helped rescue that which I hold dearest. You fought with skill and grace such as I have never seen. Truly, the universe was right to choose you, among all, as my brother’s champion. You know my name, but I do not know yours. Tell it to me so that I may see you properly honored when we return home.”

“They call me ‘Soldat’.”

Thor laughed at this answer. “I would rather know what you call yourself, but the name is appropriately fearsome in its simplicity.” 

Loki felt a wave of dizziness pass over him and fell forward. 

“He needs to eat,” the warrior said. 

Thor reached into the small traveling pouch that had been slung over his shoulder all this time. He retrieved three shining, golden apples from inside and handed one to each of his companions.

“Normally, I would not share, for they are sacred fruits intended only for the royal family, but today, Soldat, I count you as one of us.”

Loki looked at the apple in his hand. His heart seized when he recognized it. The very fruit that, just before his capture, he’d been told held the answer to his dearest hopes. How long ago and faraway all that now seemed.

“These are Idunn’s apples. Where did you get these, Thor?”

“Idunn sent Mother one of her intermittent gifts this week. I pocketed some for my travels and promptly forgot about them. It was a lucky bout of absent-mindedness, for otherwise, we would have had nothing for this moment of need.”

“Wait… You said Idunn’s apples,” the warrior mumbled. 

“Yes. I see you have heard of her, and thus know what a special treat these are. Eat,” Thor said. “You, too, brother.”

Loki tried to eat, but he could barely lift his hand to his mouth. The adrenaline had lessened, and he could no longer deny the pain of his wound nor the exhaustion of having pushed himself so hard. He groaned.

The man looked at the apple, and then at Loki drooping onto the grass. He suddenly gasped, straightened, and shook his head, as though clearing something. “Loki?”

“Yes?” he replied weakly.

“It was me you were talking about. You’re going to faint in a second and then… The apple…” The man had switched to some other language Loki did not know, but whose cadences sounded oddly familiar in the muffled echo behind the All-Speak’s translation.

“What are you mumbling about?” Loki asked. His vision swam and his ears buzzed and he could barely make out the man’s voice.

Instead of answering, the man ripped the lower part of his mask off and began devouring the fruit like a ravening animal, opening his mouth grotesquely wide in order to fit as big a bite as possible. 

“Easy now. There is no hurry,” Thor said, as one might to a child, but the warrior ignored him and continued to eat in the same disgustingly uncouth manner.

Without stopping to breathe, he pointed at Loki while he ate, alerting Thor to the fact that his brother was about to faint.

The last thing Loki saw before he passed out was the man’s throat bulging as he swallowed the last bite.


	16. Chapter 16

Upon their return, Thor and Loki headed straight for the throne room, where their parents were waiting. Once the four of them were alone, Mother all but fell upon her sons, but the icy weight of Odin’s disapproving gaze soon shriveled them out of her embrace. 

“And so he returns,” Father said, looking down from the throne up high on the dais. “The jackanapes who ignored my explicit command to remain at home.”

“I did what I thought was right, Father,” Thor said proudly. “I would do it again, too.”

“And am I to receive no word of welcome?” Loki asked.

“What kind of welcome do you imagine you deserve? Pity? A coddling kiss? You can get that from your mother.”

A deep well of resentment, nurtured during Loki’s captivity and journey home, finally exploded. “Why didn’t you send an army for me? Why didn’t you come yourself to kill every last one of them? Why didn’t you comply with their demands?”

“I do not negotiate with insurrectionists.”

“Not even when your son’s life is at stake?”

“It should never have been at stake. What good does all your talent do you—what good is all that magic inside you—if you still fall prey to an enchantment so obvious, and a manipulation so facile? Did you never once ask yourself why such a woman took such an interest in you?”

Loki steeled his face to hide his hurt. “I see from the question that my personal appeal could never be inducement enough.”

“Loki, that is not what he means,” Frigga chided.

“A son of Asgard, and a pathetically vulnerable one at that,” Odin said. “That is all anyone who meets you sees. Not your face, not your supposed appeal. Ever since you came of age, you and Thor have been targets for adventurers. But your brother, at least, is wise enough not to give his heart away so blindly and so inappropriately.”

“Is it wisdom or inability? He is too enamored of himself to even lend it to anyone,” Loki grumbled. 

Thor made wounded noises. Loki ignored them. Odin was his main target, but he had no qualms sacrificing Thor’s pride in the assault.

“For all my pathetic vulnerability and supposedly useless magic,” Loki continued, “I proved powerful and intelligent enough to free myself. I brought the help you would not send.”

“I set out of my own accord,” Thor tried again to interject.

“But it was I who brought you the rest of the way.”

“What do you mean?” Odin asked. 

“My talents overrode your will. You left me to rot, so I called upon the bonds of blood, and blood answered in the person of my brother. You left me to rot, so I called upon the universe to send me a champion, and the universe answered. That is how I escaped, not that you have troubled to ask.”

Mother’s face wrinkled in surprise, and she glanced at Father. “You transported Thor to Nornheim with blood bond magic?” she asked incredulously.

“I did.”

“And who is this champion of which you speak?” Odin asked. 

“We do not know,” Thor said. “He wore a mask, and could not give us a proper name.”

Frigga exchanged another glance with Odin. “And where is this man now?”

“Once the task was completed, he returned whence he came,” Loki said grandly, hoping Thor would leave it at that. He didn’t want to explain the full, less impressive, story of how the spells had dissolved along with his consciousness, of how Thor had found himself back in the tavern, of how Loki had awoken alone with the horse. Like Thor, the warrior must have gone back to his ship and his mission.

“Such dark magic is forbidden,” Odin said. “Where did you learn such spells?”

“What does it matter? I had to do something once they told me no one was coming. Tell me, Father, if I had not arranged matters for myself, did you ever intend to free me?”

“Of course I did. I knew the witches were watching for any sign of weakness or rescue. I could not speak of your capture to anyone. But wheels were in motion to eventually secure your safe release.”

“Well, the wheels did not roll swiftly enough for me,” Loki said, not knowing whether to feel relieved by Odin’s reassurance or annoyed that subtlety had been deemed more important than speed.

“You should have been patient. And now I find that not only did you let yourself be captured, not only have you studied forbidden magic… Worst of all, you brought Thor right to them, right into their clutches. He was what they sought. They said so in their demands. They wanted to force him into a marriage with either Karnilla herself or one of her puppets. And if not marriage, then something worse. You foolish, headstrong child. You have disappointed me, Loki.”

“That does not appear to be anything new.”

Odin sat back down in his throne, looking older and more tired than Loki had ever seen him. “The time has long been coming for me to make a decision about the future of Asgard. I have put it off, but after this episode, I must make a choice.”

Loki gulped. He had not expected this conversation to happen so soon. He had hoped to secure a few more positive proofs before that day. But now it was here, and with such a prologue, he could guess what was coming.

The next few minutes were a blur. He was too busy willing the tears away to properly see or hear what happened around him, but he understood enough. He let himself be embraced by Thor, let automatic words of congratulation fall from his lips, greeted the councilors who were soon admitted into the room and informed of the decision. He got through the ordeal despite his vision having gone hazy, his ears ringing, and his sense of self knocked askew. He wasn’t sure what was left for him now, nor how to imagine his future. For so long, so many of his motivations had involved the throne. He knew not, anymore, who he was meant to be nor what he was meant to do.

Only Mother saw him slip out of the room, like the forgotten shadow he would always be. He stumbled his way through the labyrinth of corridors towards his apartments. The distance seemed longer than he remembered and the utter loss he felt added anchors to his feet, lengthening the journey.

Once inside, he barred all the doors with magic. He had longed for the sun all during his captivity, but now it beamed obnoxiously, mockingly bright. Loki kneeled on the window seat and reached up to release the curtains. Something under the cushion poked painfully into his kneecap. He lifted it and found the knife the Norns had presented to him, wrapped in the cloth with the ancient rules. They had promised to send it somewhere ‘safe’. Apparently, they had meant here.

Under normal circumstances, Loki would have jumped at the chance to begin working on the spell. But he was exhausted and depressed, and felt even more so at the prospect of learning a new language, and then having to procure whatever might be needed for the spell, and then the effort that would be necessary to enact the magic, and then… Creating the Lifeline Formula had required a similarly enormous amount of work, and his lack of success then, combined with his overall despondency now, provided little in the way of encouragement or motivation.

Later, he told himself. He would begin this work later, when he felt less like dying. 

In the meanwhile, he needed to hide the knife away somewhere more secure. Loki took apart the window seat, as he had so many times, and opened the safe. While rummaging for a nice flat spot, he saw a scrap of white sticking up from behind a potion bottle. Only after he’d pulled it out did he recognize it as the letter Bucky had written him before his sojourn. Loki had long ago gotten into the habit of covering everything from Midgard with an anti-weathering spell, but he’d forgotten this object too completely to have renewed it. The paper had begun to yellow around the edges.

Bucky had said to save this for a day during the voyage when Loki might feel particularly low. The voyage was long over, but if ever there were a day for such a gift, it was today. Loki sat cross-legged on the floor and opened the envelope. The lines and curves of Bucky’s hideous, foreign scrawl blurred and bent as the All-Speak translated the meaning of the words.

_Dear Loki,  
So, you’re leaving for your big trip. Tomorrow, sort of. I know you say it isn’t a big deal, but I know you, and I know when you’re lying. ~~I know because you do this thing with~~ I know I already gave you that book, but I wanted to give you something else, except all the things I can think of I can’t afford, not without you around. So you’re getting a pep talk._

_I’m trying to think of why you might need one. Probably because somebody said something mean about your magic, or you’re homesick, or everyone likes Thor best, or you don’t feel well. Actually, it’s probably the last one. You never feel well, and you said something about going to a fire realm, so that’s got me worried. Take care of yourself, all right? I don’t know what I’d do if you got heat stroke and never came back. Because I need you to come back. Even if it’s just because you feel sorry for the dumb sap in Brooklyn who’s going to be checking his secret watch every five minutes for the new few years, hoping it glows._

_That looks stupid written out like that. Does it sound stupid to you too? You’ve got it worse than me, because a marble’s dumber than a watch. ~~I worry sometimes it’s too dumb to be real, but I need so much for you to be real.~~_

_I know you want more than anything to make a heap of new friends and have everybody see how smart you are so your dad will make you the next king. I know I should want it for you too. But you know what? If it doesn’t happen, it’s all right. I think you’d hate being king. Maybe Asgard’s different, but it seems to me that being rich without having to do any work is the best kind of life, and that’s what you get if you’re just the king’s brother. I think being king would be an awful lot of boring work, having to worry about everybody, and wars and politics and making jobs and stuff. As far as I can tell, you guys don’t even have a Congress to take the weight off. So it’ll be nice for you if it happens, I guess, but it’ll also be nice if it doesn’t. Or maybe I’m just being selfish, because a king probably wouldn’t have time for dumb things like glowing marbles and secret nobody friends._

_I know you think everybody looks down on you for being smaller and sicklier and different. But if I know anything, it’s that the smaller, sicklier ones are the best ones. One day people other than me and Thor are going to see that too. Just you wait. Sometimes I think about why the universe picked me out of a hat the way it did, that day when you asked it to show you the saddest person that’ll ever be. Sometimes I wonder if I really am the saddest person that’ll ever be, and if it’s because one day you’ll get loads of other friends, and girlfriends, and maybe become king. And then you’ll ditch me. _

_All right, now I need a pep talk. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea. But it’s all written now and the watch is already glowing, and I haven’t got anything else to give you tonight._

_Anyway, what I meant to say is that you’re pretty swell, just the way you are, no matter what anyone in stupid Asgard says, or in the other realms. It’s their loss if they don’t see it. You’ll still be swell even if things don’t work out the way you want. You tell good stories, and you have the smartest ideas of anyone I’ve ever met, and ~~you’re not nearly as weird-looking as you think you are,~~ we’ve had lots of good times, and you’re up for anything, and you make me laugh. There’s nothing I look forward to half as much as our Saturdays. Even if nothing else works out, and even though it’s only in the weird way we’ve got, you’ll always have me._

_So thanks, try not to get down, try not to get heat stroke, and come back, okay?_

_I’ll try to have a better present for you than this when you get back. But you’ve have to come back to get it, okay?_

_Lots of love, always,  
Bucky_

Loki read it, and then again. And again. There was nothing significant about this missive. It was merely a transcription of an adolescent’s stream of consciousness, containing sentiments that Bucky had once or twice let slip, though not in eons, and almost never in such detail. And yet, as Bucky had intended, it was exactly what Loki needed to hear today. This honest, artless, centuries-old outpouring of affection had proven oddly prescient. Bucky had somehow predicted and touched upon the very nature of today’s unhappiness. This boy possessed no magic, and had received only the most workaday education, but he had seen through everything—through Loki, through Asgardians he had never met, through time itself.

Loki read the letter again. He traced his fingers over the old, splotched ink. He vanished the cross-outs in order to read them, and cherished those suppressed words even more than the rest. As the stabbing ache of affection overtook and somewhat quelled his previous despair, Loki was reminded that there had always been _two_ things he’d wanted most in life, not just one: to be seen as Thor’s equal in the eyes of Asgard; and Bucky. 

Today, for the first time, he more closely examined that second desire. The affection he felt was old, but something about it, reading and rereading this letter… Something about it felt new. Loki discovered a dammed-up confusion, a change of course that he had failed—or refused—to notice in the otherwise comforting constant flow of their friendship.

It was too late to go to the marina, but there were other ways of seeing Bucky, emotionally safer ways of continuing this investigation into his own heart. Loki had copied Bucky’s clever idea of shelving his forbidden books in the guise of boring ones. These days, ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ hid in plain sight as an old textbook on Dwarfish grammar rules. The four-strip of photographs hid in the break between chapters seven and eight. Bucky’s and Loki’s faces, captured from hundreds of years ago, smiled up at him now. 

Loki compared the face before him with the one from his more recent memories. Bucky was older now, with a different haircut, a five o’clock shadow on his chin, more defined cheekbones… But in all the ways that mattered, he had not changed. Still odd-looking, with slightly uneven teeth… Bright eyes, infectious smile... 

Loki’s heart pounded as he looked. He found himself longing, and realized that he had been longing for some time now, with a slowly flowering, inexorable desperation, though he could not say for sure when it had started.

His visit to the magic-cleansed den of the Norns had shown him the truth of Amora’s spell, but normally, the only way to fight a love spell was, well, with the real thing. He remembered how the enchantment had always lessened in New York, and how he had always felt better when he was there. He would never have been able to defy her thrall long enough to even visit the Norns had he not been doing it for Bucky. Loki saw now that he _had_ had been fighting the spell, without even knowing it. 

It all made sense now. His irrational hatred of Susan and all of Bucky’s girlfriends. His preference for sharing a bed with Bucky even when he had a much nicer hotel room a few blocks away. The compromises he made for Bucky and no one else. His eternal desire to be in Bucky’s company, and the lengths to which the desire to keep that company had already driven him. 

He remembered their last meeting. He remembered how he’d felt, without understanding what it had meant, when Bucky had drawn so close, had been about to touch him. He remembered the misattributed churning in the pit of his stomach, the trembling in his knees, the dangerous, heady feeling of losing control. At the time, he hadn’t seen it for what it was, but now he did.

He also remembered how Bucky had rejected him. He remembered Bucky’s reluctance to touch him. He remembered how Bucky was physically affectionate with everyone else, yet stiffened and pulled back when Loki’s fingers accidentally brushed his. He remembered Bucky’s self-loathing preference for women.

Loki knew, now, that he wanted. But as always, he wanted a thing he could not have. 

He collapsed on his bed, but could not find a comfortable position. He looked at the picture again, and at the empty space beside him. He knew he was giving into weakness, and was proving himself just as pathetic as Father had said, but Loki couldn’t help himself. He needed more than a letter and a colourless photograph. He needed Bucky. 

He focused his mind and conjured an illusion beside him, first based on the old picture, and then corrected, fine-tuned. He added colour and altered it to resemble what Bucky looked like now, or in the future, or whatever you called it in this bizarre situation of theirs. The false Bucky stretched his strong legs and flopped violently onto his side to look at Loki. He smiled, lips curving up more on one side than the other and eyes crinkling under his overgrown eyebrows, in a perfect replica of his best come-hither expression—the one he had given various girls over the years. His white shirt rucked up to show a stripe of tanned muscle and a trail of hair pointing downwards. 

Loki had seen all this a thousand times and thought little of it besides ‘Bucky’. But now the image left him heavy-tongued and short of breath. Now he wanted to touch. He reached out but felt nothing but air. With a sigh, he rolled onto his back and let the illusion vanish. It hadn’t been realistic to begin with; Bucky was never that silent. Yet Loki could not bring himself to put false words in his mouth. He wanted Bucky—challenging, teasing, stubborn, infuriating Bucky—not a puppet.

It was useless. Everything was useless.

* * *

Loki wallowed in silent agony until the next day. Then Mother broke through all the charms on the door and would not be goaded into leaving.

“I told them all that you are over-tired and ill after your trip,” she said, sitting beside him on the bed. “You will not be expected to make an appearance until you are ready for it.”

Loki covered his face with a pillow. “I don’t care what they expect.”

Frigga pulled the pillow off, and through sheer force of presence, made Loki look at her when she said, “You would care if everyone knew you were in here sulking like a child. You would care if everyone knew where you have really been. I could have told them. Instead, I have deflected all rumours of your capture since the day the messenger came with the news and the terms. Instead, I have maintained your lie. I even corresponded with poor Vifill, whom you have used abominably, by the way. As a result, no one outside our immediate family knows the truth. No one knows that the trickster was tricked.”

This was more kindness than Loki had expected, even from his mother.

“Thank you,” he mumbled, and pulled himself even further under the covers to hide his embarrassment. 

Frigga patted the lump where she knew his head to be. “I know you think your heart to be broken. I know you think this is the worst pain you have ever experienced. But this wasn’t love, Loki. If you had truly been in love, it would hurt more.”

Loki couldn’t tell whether she truly thought _this_ was what bothered him most, or if she knew him well enough to focus first on some secondary topic of unhappiness, since he was unlikely to engage directly with the main one. Either way, he was not in the mood for this well-meaning lecture, not right now, with his hopes, his heart, and his sense of self all smashed and confused. 

“Must we do this, Mother?” he asked, wishing she would go away.

“I’ve been so angry with myself,” she continued. “I should have seen what was happening. I should never have let you set out on that journey. I had noticed for some time that something troubled you, and even Thor mentioned a similar sense of misgiving, but neither of us guessed the cause. And that is how I know it was not love. This perversion made you strange and unlike yourself. But love… Love makes you better, Loki. Love makes you think outside of yourself. Love gives you new life and joy. Love makes you think someone is beautiful _because_ of how much you care for them. That is how you can know the shallow desire you felt was not the real thing.”

“And what if the object of your affections is already beautiful?” Loki asked, since she seemed so insistent to discuss a topic he desperately wanted to silence.

“Well, that is always convenient, yes. But even then, your affections would amplify it. Or perhaps the object of your love is beautiful in a style you might not have appreciated had you not loved them for who they were. One day I hope you feel this. One day I hope you find someone who makes you as happy and whole as you deserve to be.”

“Not likely,” he said, though he knew he already had, and it was not meant to be, worse luck.

“Sometimes the most unlikely things are the ones that come true. Sometimes they have been under our noses the entire time, but we have been too blind to see.”

Everything she said hypothetically, Loki already knew in actuality. She had no way of knowing she had stumbled upon the truth. In order to keep her as far from it as possible, Loki uncovered his face and delivered a different truth, one he knew she did not want to hear, and which would distract her.

“Neither Thor nor I are ever going to want Sif like that, Mother. I know the dreams you have harbored since we were children. The daughter of your friend with one of your sons.”

She sighed. “I didn’t realize I was so transparent. Parents know better than to voice such hopes to their children, lest they reject out of rebellion that which they may have wanted if left to their own devices. But it matters little. I promise, it will not always be like this. You will find someone. Even if it takes another voyage through the realms. You're so tall and handsome now. Everyone you met before will take new notice.”

“Take notice of Odin's humiliated son? Even more firmly second choice than I was before?” 

And now they had come to it, to the real issue. 

“There are many who would prefer life with a younger brother to life with a King. The wiser ladies and warriors of the various high courts—the ones I would want for you—would know this and find you more alluring for your position. For it is you who gets to have all the fun and freedom, without the responsibility.”

Her entire speech was an echo of the letter. Bucky, a mere mortal at the young age of sixteen, had seen what Frigga deemed great wisdom. Bucky, who elicited every emotion Mother spoke of, and whom Loki had loved, for as long as he could remember, with a desperation equaled only by his recent need to escape that dungeon.

He knew the thing was hopeless, for so many reasons, but he asked anyway, casually, jokingly, “And if my choice were someone from outside the courts? A stranger?”

Frigga frowned. “That... Now is not quite the moment to propose such a thing.”

“You mean my judgment is not to be trusted. Because of what pathetically easy prey I am for adventurers.”

“There’s no need to be so dramatic. It is only that the wounds are rather fresh, darling. For all of us. I doubt even you could imagine trusting anyone now.”

“But if time were to pass? What if one day, long from now, my affections were to settle on a nobody? What if I met some kind-hearted, harmless peasant who could not possibly be suspected of harbouring nefarious intent?”

“You could never love a peasant, Loki. You would have nothing in common. What would you talk about?”

“I’m sure I could think of something,” Loki said, but the laughter in her face hammered home the impossibility of what he wanted. Apparently, _everything_ he wanted was a joke. 

“Your father and I would never force you into a relationship you did not wish, but you must understand that when the time comes—and I hope will not be for a long while yet, so that I may keep you to myself—it will need to be a politically advantageous one. Neither your heart nor Thor’s is entirely free. Such is the burden of royalty.”

“And yet only a minute ago you tried to convince me that princes with no hope of power get to have all the fun and freedom. You cannot have it both ways.”

“Your father’s wish is that you will become Thor’s closest and wisest advisor. He has always envisioned the two of you ruling together, almost jointly. Him the face and the arm, with you as the wit and the reason.”

“Then perhaps you ought to arrange for me to marry Thor, if I am to play the role you always have. At least then I could be assured someone good-looking.” 

He had expected her to scoff or scold him for even joking about such a thing, between brothers. But instead she looked... nervous, almost, but he must have read her expression incorrectly, for the shadow that crossed her face was already gone, replaced by something lighter and more mischievous.

“I had hoped, you know, when you said you were going to Vídbláin. I’ve never met him, but I’ve heard such lovely things about your friend, Vifill. How smart and charming and handsome, and from such an important family. Only someone truly devoted to you would have agreed to let you drag his name into such an ill-conceived scheme. Have you ever thought…?” 

Loki groaned and dove under the covers again. He could not bear talking about Vifill or another tiring journey through the realms or more efforts to meet people. He could not bear this conversation another moment. “I don’t know, Mother. I don’t want to talk about it right now. Please, let me be. I will be well again tomorrow, and will pretend that everything is fine. But for now, let me be.”

Frigga sighed and got up to go. “Very well. I hope you won’t hold this against your brother. He relies on you, and will rely on you even more in the coming years. And I know that you love him every bit as much as he loves you. Not even you are so good an actor.”

Loki didn’t answer, but he thought about her words while waiting for the door to shut behind her. He resented Thor for having, yet again, gotten what Loki wanted. He resented knowing that Thor wouldn’t make nearly as competent a ruler as Loki would have. But knowing that Thor had defied Father to come to Loki’s aid… 

Loki could not wholly resent him after that.


	17. Chapter 17

As he’d promised his mother, Loki left his room and pretended to be relaxed and rested after his visit to Vidblain. The playacting came easy; recent events had left him confused enough that it couldn’t even be called acting. Perhaps he _was_ the prince they all wanted him to be—sombre, yes, but happy to be home, happy for his brother, happy to be free of the responsibility of the crown and to while away his days in nothingness. 

With a gaiety more false than any of his illusions, he spent his days as though nothing were wrong: clasping Thor on the back in congratulations; sparring with Fandral; nodding respectfully at his father. Everyone remarked upon the good humour in which his visit to Vidblain had left him. Everyone—even Frigga, who knew the truth—encouraged Loki to invite Vifill to stay soon, to prolong these high spirits. 

When he wasn’t playing his role, he sat hunched in his chambers with the intention of understanding the ancient language of the runes inscribed on the handle of the Norns’ knife. However, constantly distracted as he was by wanting—real this time, not the fabricated mental gauze of Amora’s spell—the words ran into one another. He’d close his eyes for a moment’s rest and there was Bucky: beside him, over him, in front of him. In the street, shoulders brushing. At the movies, with thighs and hands close enough to touch. At opposite sides of the four-poster bed at Aunt Helen’s. A thousand moments that he now fantasized about having gone differently.

Loki reviewed every memory, but was unable to pinpoint the moment when the change in his feelings had occurred. Perhaps it didn’t matter, given that it was hopeless anyway. Still, he ached to see Bucky and to test (suffer through, really, masochist that he was) these new realizations in person. But their friendship mattered too much to lose to awkwardness. Loki couldn’t go to New York until he could feign normalcy and calm there as well as he was feigning it here—two different masks covering two different disappointments.

As the days passed, he continued to conjure illusions of Bucky, but for instruction, not fantasy. He practiced every possible variation of how their reunion might play out, whether they might meet in Bucky’s room, or at a diner with friends, or in the mayhem of the subway. He imagined what they might talk about—all the different topics they usually discussed. He thought through all the possible developments in Bucky’s day-to-day that might have happened since his last visit. He practiced answering all of the phantom Bucky’s questions with a smooth smile, and in the friendly, sardonic manner he always had.

Only after he’d run through every conceivable scenario did he look for the marble. He expected at least a few weeks before Bucky might happen to check the watch. But to his surprise, the answering glow came the next day.

* * *

Loki stepped out of the cave and into an elevator. The uncomfortable lurching motion exacerbated the flip of his stomach when he saw Bucky standing beside him, hands in his overcoat pockets, gaze fixed on his shoes, and the brim of his brown felt hat casting a shadow over his face. Bucky looked exactly the same and yet elicited such a different reaction in Loki—a desire to rub his shoulders, to press him against the paneling of the elevator, to touch...

Until now, the change in Loki’s affections had been confusing enough, but the distance had kept them somewhat academic. The force of encountering this new reality in the flesh practically knocked him down.

Bucky didn’t immediately sense that he had company, giving Loki time to school his face. Loki’s left hand trembled, so he shoved both of them into the pockets of his coat.

The movement caused Bucky to look up. Loki caught a fleeting glimpse of something horrifyingly sad before Bucky’s face softened into worry.

“Yikes,” he said. “That bad, huh?”

“What?”

“You’re staring at me funny. And your hand is shaking in your pocket. Something tells me it didn’t go so well.”

This was not the cause of Loki’s agitation. However, the assumption provided a decent—and honest—cover. 

“It went worse than you could possibly imagine,” Loki replied, voice hitching over the last couple of words. Having to keep the truth secret from all but his family, and not wishing to discuss it with any of them, he hadn’t had an opportunity to talk about what had happened to him. But now that he’d started, he could feel his anguish about to burst from the punctured dam.

“Aw, come ‘ere.”

Bucky pulled him into a hug. Between their many layers, Loki couldn’t feel anything beyond pressure, but he buried himself in the comfort. If he clung a little too desperately, well, Bucky was clinging just as hard, so close that Loki’s nose dug into the side of his neck. Bucky smelled just like he always did, with the added overlay of cigarettes and starch. Loki could have planted a kiss there, just on that lickable spot above his coat collar, but he had prepared himself for this challenge. He pushed his nose away from the warm skin and into the scratchy wool of his coat collar instead.

Bucky held him for the entire elevator ride, releasing only when it began to slow. “Let’s get you a drink,” he whispered into Loki’s ear, causing a new wave of want to rush through him. “And you can tell me all about it.”

“I don’t need a drink.”

“But I do,” Bucky said.

Loki had not expected to deviate from one of his many scenarios this soon. Even though life moved at a faster pace here, he hadn’t expected any major developments in the few days since his last visit.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“You first.”

Loki noticed that Bucky was moving the lever to open the door himself. “Where’s the operator?”

“On strike. The whole union’s on strike.”

“Then how are we—”

“Most elevators can go on their own, you know.”

Loki hadn’t known. “Then why are there always operators?”

“Most people are too scared. They like thinking someone’s driving, even if no one really is.”

“But not you?” Loki asked as they left the office building and a blast of cold air smacked his face. “You aren’t afraid?”

“There are worse ways to go than an elevator crash,” Bucky said with a strange bitterness.

Now Loki grew worried. “What happened?”

“Don’t worry about it. Hey,” Bucky continued, changing the subject, “on second thought, how about we pick up a bottle of something and drink it in my room? More comfortable there than in a bar or something.”

Repressing these new feelings would probably have been easier in public, surrounded by other stimuli and social pressures. But the idea of receiving some comfort for his ordeal was also welcome, so Loki answered, “Privacy would be preferable for the tale I have to tell. Anyone listening in would take me for a lunatic, even more than is usual.” 

They walked briskly, shouldering their way through the throngs of commuters. Loki thought he detected a hushed, anticipatory energy about the city that he had never before felt. He was trying to articulate the vague observation in order to ask about it, but Bucky kept glancing over at him, breaking his concentration.

“What?” Loki asked.

Bucky rubbed a hand over his face and forced a smile that slowly turned warm and real. “I’m glad you came today. I’ve been walking around with my hands in my pockets all day, whenever it wouldn’t be a bad time, just in case. Didn’t think it would work though. We didn’t coordinate before you left. Sorry about… you know.”

“It’s fine,” Loki said shortly, his disappointment and frustration making his voice sound angrier than he felt. When Bucky’s face fell, he clarified, “I’m not angry. But let’s not discuss it.”

“Right. Yeah.”

Bucky selected a bottle of very expensive whiskey from one of the liquor stores on their way. He didn’t have the purse with him, and so paid for it himself.

“Can you afford that?” Loki asked.

“What else am I gonna spend it on?”

Both the words and the hopeless tone of this response made Loki even more worried, but the more he asked what the matter was, the more falsely bright Bucky became, so he gave up. Bucky was obviously in one of his moods, and nothing would make him divulge the cause until he was ready. In some ways, Loki decided, this mood might be for the best; his worry distracted him somewhat from the simmering, desperate need he felt every time he looked at Bucky. It helped him keep himself in check.

When they reached home, they stopped in the kitchen only long enough to grab glasses and a bottle of soda water. Once upstairs, Bucky shucked off his jacket, toed out of his dress shoes, and sank into one of the two worn blue armchairs. 

“Start pouring and tell me. Start from the beginning.”

* * *

Bucky’s jaw was set hard enough to break rocks and the furrow between his eyes had become a canyon—a beautiful rictus of stupefaction that had morphed during the telling of Loki’s tale into terrifyingly blank rage. Loki had never before seen such an expression of cold fury on his face. For almost the first time, he spied a razor’s edge of darkness in Bucky, a dangerous streak that had rarely had cause, in his placid life, to find purchase.

If anything, this edge made him that much more appealing. Loki couldn’t look away and felt himself grow warm, desire pooling low in his belly. He momentarily lost the thread of his tale as he shifted in his seat.

“I’ll kill ‘em,” Bucky muttered. “I’ll kill ‘em all.”

“I think you’ll find the matter already taken care of.”

Loki told of how Amora’s threat had spurred him to cast such powerful spells. He did not, however, tell him of the visit to the Norns, of the apple or the knife. He had no desire to hide the news; however, this was the most restorative conversation he’d had since his ordeal. He wanted to savour the comfort of Bucky’s sympathetic anger before changing the subject. The ramifications of the Norns’ gifts and advice were far-reaching, but Loki had been too focused on preparing for this simple, yet harrowing, meeting to think through plans or an approach.

“So they’re dead?” Bucky asked when Loki had finished the tale of his rescue and escape. He seemed somewhat mollified, but still furious.

“It would seem that the warrior’s aim was true. Word came yesterday from Nornheim confirming that Karnilla is indeed dead. A dart to the heart. A weak weapon made deadly by its precision.”

“And Amora?”

“They would not speak of a mere apprentice. But I saw her fall.”

“So, then what happened?”

“We rode until the horses were spent, and then stopped to rest. The effort of the escape and my wound proved too much for me. The spells dissolved along with my consciousness. Thor said he watched me faint, and the next thing he knew, he was back in the tavern.”

“And the other guy?”

“We assume that, like Thor, he returned whence he came. I woke alone, save for the horses. But, now that he knew where he was going, and had seen the place with his own eyes, Thor was able to fly with Mjolnir and find me.”

Bucky shook his head. “Jesus, Loki. What a story.”

“That is only the half of it. Upon my return home, Father announced that as a result of this misadventure, he had decided to name Thor as his heir.”

“Shit. Really? He couldn’t have, I don’t know, waited awhile?”

“He made the decision based on my stupidity in having fallen into the trap. The episode apparently solidified my unworthiness to rule.”

“How were you supposed to know it was a trap?”

“Does it matter?”

Bucky didn’t apologize for things that weren’t his fault, nor did he deliver platitudes as another might have done. Instead he reached across the space between their chairs and took Loki’s hand. Loki couldn’t stop a shiver and, before he could really process the touch, Bucky quickly withdrew and slumped back into his own chair.

“So now what?” he asked.

“Nothing. My role has been decided. I continue as I did before, in perpetuity. Studying and sparring, feasting and feting. An empty existence. The spare. Less than that once Thor has his own heir. Apparently my fate is either to whisper wisdom into dense King Thor’s ear, or to be married off for political alliances. Or, if I’m especially lucky, both.”

Bucky sat up with a start. “You’re getting married?”

“Not imminently. There are no current prospects. It was merely something mentioned for the distant future.”

“Oh. Good. Still,” Bucky said, getting up to pour them another round. “I’m glad you got out. I’m glad Thor told your dad to stuff it and came to get you. I’m glad the spells worked. I just… I wish I could have helped.”

“There is nothing you could have done. You are no match for that kind of power. I wouldn’t have wanted you to try. I wouldn’t have wanted you there at all.”

“I know. That’s the problem. There’s nothing I can do. Hell, there’s no way for me to even know something’s wrong. You could have been killed, and all I’d ever know was that you never came back.”

Loki ached to see Bucky’s dejection at this thought.

“Speaking of which,” he said, “I read your letter the other day.”

“What letter?”

“The one you wrote me before I set out on my sojourn.”

“That was years ago. You’re telling me you just got to it?”

“I was saving it for a low day, per your suggestion.”

Bucky crossed his arms. “You mean you forgot all about it till just now.”

“I didn’t say that.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow.

“Very well,” Loki confessed. “Yes.”

Bucky shook his head and looked at the floor. Affecting a passable imitation of boredom, he said, “I don't even remember what I wrote in that.”

Loki saw through Bucky’s lie just as easily as Bucky had seen through his a moment ago. "It doesn’t matter whether you remember. What matters is that it did its job."

"That’s good, I guess. Is there anything else I can do? Do you wanna… I don’t know. Let’s get you cheered up. Do you wanna go out, after all? See a movie? Go dancing? Find some girls to show you a good time? It’s Friday night and I’ve got nowhere to be.”

Bucky didn’t sound like he very much wanted to go out. Loki certainly didn’t.

“I’m quite comfortable here. And I doubt Susan would appreciate us seeking out female company. Unless you intend to bring her, which...”

“Uhhhh.” Bucky never blushed, but he could be quite transparent all the same.

“What happened?” Loki asked.

“It’s over between Susan and me.”

Loki couldn’t believe it. He was hardly unhappy about the prospect of no longer having to watch Bucky with his girlfriend. But he had not expected this. Yet another scenario for which he had failed to prepare.

“When?”

“About a week ago.”

“But I’ve barely been gone a week!”

“Yeah, it was a day or two after you left.”

“But why?”

“I just… Realized it wasn’t fair to her.”

“What wasn’t fair?”

“I dunno.” Bucky stared down into his glass and shrugged more articulately than any words he could have spoken.

“You desired someone else,” Loki surmised with a pang of jealousy, as well as a sense of betrayal for not having been told about feelings this serious sooner. “Whom?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters.”

“Not when it’s one-sided.”

“Are you sure?” Loki asked, because Bucky had always been quite successful in his pursuits, and now, especially, Loki could not imagine why anyone might reject him.

“Yeah. It’s pretty clear. It’s all right, though. It’s for the best. It was a bad idea anyway. I’ll get over it.”

“I would encourage you to. Anyone who fails to return your affection is an idiot and cannot possibly be worthwhile. Though I can’t say with any honesty that I’m sorry to hear it. Susan and I were never friends. But I don’t understand why you would give up what you already had in favor of something impossible. I thought you more practical than that.”

“Maybe I’ve been hanging around Steve too long, but I’d rather be the kind of guy who does the right thing than the kind of guy who does the practical thing. It wasn’t right that I was with her when I wanted… She deserves better than that. She deserves someone who only has eyes for her.”

“You have indeed been hanging around Steve too long if such weak motivations underlie your stupidity. In order to counteract his influence, you ought to see me that much more.”

Bucky let out another of those disturbingly bitter little laughs and took another drink. “Well, seeing him less isn’t gonna happen. He’s staying here now. That’s what all this mess is.”

Loki had dismissed the extra things strewn around the room as a temporary increase in Bucky’s usual disorder, but now that he was looking, he saw them for what they were—luggage. “These are Steve’s?”

“There was an awful measles outbreak in his building. Everyone had to vacate right away. Things have been rough the past couple of years for him, since his Ma passed, so he didn’t have enough cash to get a new place that quick.”

“Your elderly, not-very-well aunt let a man with a contagious disease move into her house?” Loki asked skeptically.

“Steve didn’t get it. He’s all right.”

“I find that unlikely. I thought he always got everything.”

Bucky looked sheepish, caught. But then he straightened and met Loki’s eye, defiant. “I know you think it didn’t work, but it _did_.”

“What didn’t work?”

“That potion you made me. It didn’t turn us into something else, but it did make me stronger. Not so much that anyone but me could probably tell though. Probably because I didn’t take the whole thing. And Steve hasn’t come down with anything since I gave it to him. He’s fine. And I—”

“You did _what_?” Loki all but screamed as Bucky’s meaning sank in.

Bucky flexed his jaw, as he always did when he refused to back down. “I drank half and gave him the rest. He looks the same, but he’s better. He hasn’t gotten sick, not once. Not since he took it. And I… I don’t get sick anymore either. Things still hurt, but they don’t mess me up like they used to. I’m stronger. I can stand more than other guys. I don’t know why it didn’t work for you the way you expected, but I’m telling you, you mixed it right. I didn’t tell you before now because I knew you’d be mad. But it was the right thing to do.”

Loki was too angry to care about this unexpected success after having resigned himself to failure. All he could see was red. Red, and Steve’s things all around the room, claiming even more space in Bucky’s life. Steve, Steve, everywhere. All the anger that had been brewing in him for weeks, but about which he had not been allowed to say anything, had not been allowed to vent, now channeled into this.

“I spent hundreds of years making that potion. I ventured into dark places that I… I risked…” Loki sputtered, too angry to articulate his feelings. “I made it for you!”

“Steve needed it more than me.”

“But it was intended for you! Because I wanted to ensure _your_ health and safety! I made it because I need _you!_ I don’t need Steve!”

“But I do! Why can’t you get that?”

“You see him every day. You _have_ seen him every day, whereas I have ever only had snatches of time. You gave him the potion I made for you, with the wish of helping ensure more of our limited time. And now you invite him to share your room and your bed, thus precluding me ever…” A horrible thought occurred to Loki, so upset—about this, about everything—that he continued on without thinking, shouting, “Are you lovers now, too? Or, no, is he the one you desire so fruitlessly?”

“Me and _Steve_?” Bucky sputtered, flabbergasted, now yelling, too. “How could you think—”

“Because as far as I can see, he always wins. Because I can see nothing else that he has failed to claim from me!”

Bucky immediately snapped back, and got up to give it to Loki straight in the face, so close that he practically spat at him, breathed the words right into his face. “Is that really what you think? Have you ever even...”

Instead of continuing his previous sentence, Bucky trailed off and his lips began to mouth half-formed “w” shapes that all died before ever finding voice. Loki held his breath, for in the same moment, he, too, heard his slip of a moment ago. All his practice and preparation for this meeting, all the conversations he’d anticipated… All undone by a flash of blinding rage. But it was little surprise; his temper had always been his undoing, even when he’d been small.

They hadn’t seemed that close when they’d been yelling at one another, but now… Loki felt suffocated. He would have stepped back had there been anywhere to go but somehow he’d found himself backed into a corner.

Bucky continued to sputter and squint, and Loki wanted to run. He had already unconsciously summoned the shadow portal, ready to slip right out of this world and time as he had done on every other occasion when something uncomfortable had happened, but Bucky grabbed Loki's hand and pulled him close.

"Don't you dare run away," he said, low and close—too close. He blew the words against Loki's face. "Don’t you fucking dare.”

The portal was by the dresser, though Bucky couldn’t see it. Escape would be so easy… Or would it? In this instance, Loki couldn’t imagine the situation being resolved when he came back, as their previous arguments had been. Unless he never came back at all? But the idea of never seeing Bucky again was intolerable, no matter how humiliating the rejection he was about to receive.

Bucky tightened his grip around Loki’s wrist. "Did you mean it?"

"I…” If Bucky’s face had been more legible in the moment, Loki might have been able to choose the right words, the slippery ones that could get him out of this. But Bucky was staring at him from a single suffocating inch away, bewildered, still angry, and something else that Loki had never seen before and couldn’t parse.

Bucky stepped in even closer and put his hand on the back of Loki's neck. “Come on. Tell me. Did you mean it?”

This was not a scenario Loki had practiced. He moved his head a fraction downwards, close enough to feel the tip of Bucky’s nose against his, but not quite close enough for confirmation. His instincts screamed at him to maintain plausible deniability at all costs.

However, if Loki had always been the persistent one, Bucky had always been the braver one. He closed the distance between them and touched his lips to Loki’s, just for a moment. Waiting. Querying. Loki stood paralyzed with a combination of fear and desperate want until Bucky’s fingers came to rest at the nape of his neck, sliding up against the goose bumps that had appeared, and nestling in the curls there.

Loki gulped and opened his mouth a fraction, leaning in just enough to let Bucky’s open lips catch around his lower one. They stood like statues for what seemed like a lifetime, not quite kissing, but not _not_ kissing. Loki’s fingers had curled into tight fists; the sharp stab of his nails against his palm was the only thing keeping him grounded, and reassuring him he had not slipped into a fantasy.

“You haven’t decked me yet,” Bucky whispered wonderingly into Loki's mouth.

“Ought I to?” Loki mumbled stupidly.

Bucky chuckled. “It’d be nicer if you didn’t.”

Having caught his breath, Bucky tilted towards him again, this time at a less nose-crushing angle. There was more intent in this kiss, the tiniest bit more movement, but it was still chastely feather-light. Little more than lips ghosting over one another. Bucky’s fingers trembled in Loki’s hair, and Loki’s nails dug even further into his palms. Loki took a deep breath and made some advances of his own. He kissed Bucky’s nose, his cheek, feeling a bit braver about kissing his face than his mouth. Bucky choked back a noise Loki had never heard before, but which he wanted to hear a million times more.

“If you're fucking with me,” Bucky said the next time they parted for air. “If this is all some big joke, one of your—”

“No. Not about this. Never about this,” Loki breathed.

“Good.”

Loki smelled the earthy sweetness of the liquor on Bucky’s breath. He'd tasted it on his lips, too, but had thought in the moment that, of course, Bucky tasted that sweet. However, now he feared…

"Is this the whiskey's doing?”

“No, I’m not drunk,” Bucky said. “Maybe feeling a little braver, but not enough to do anything I haven’t wanted to do for a long time.”

“A long time?” Loki was so shocked that he tried to take a step backwards, but Bucky held him tight.

“Yeah. What—”

“The person who led you to end things with Susan,” Loki said, because suddenly something Bucky had said didn’t matter now mattered more than anything in the world. “Tell me it was me.”

Bucky’s smile was slow and small, but had a mischievous, happy spark to it. “The one you said was an idiot who ‘couldn’t possibly be worthwhile’? The one you were saying I should get over?”

“It is not one-sided. Therefore, those comments do not apply to me.”

“Typical,” Bucky said, but his inability to keep his face stern was a silent, confirmation.

However, although thrilled, Loki remained confused. “But you don’t want me. I offered...”

“You offered to use me as practice for somebody else. I’ve got too much self-respect for that.”

Loki saw it all now, replayed the scene with new understanding. He felt like a fool. To cover his embarrassment, he teased, “You mean, you were afraid you would accidentally reveal the truth.”

Bucky shrugged; another silent confirmation. “But what about you? ‘Cause before today you’ve never…”

“I don’t know. Perhaps recently, perhaps always. Perhaps it happened incrementally. Having spent the past many years under a spell has hardly helped. But I am not teasing. Neither am I confused. Nor am I trying to channel my disappointments into...” Loki gestured between them, and was glad that he had thought to pre-empt what was likely to be Bucky’s next question. “It was your letter that made me realize.”

“There was nothing in that letter like—”

“I thought you didn’t remember anything you had written in it,” Loki said, repressing a smile.

“Well…” Bucky said, but when when his eyes met Loki’s again, whatever he’d been about to say seemed to slip away. “You know, when I thought about this, I pictured a lot less yammering and a lot more…”

“A lot more what?” Loki whispered, a challenge.

Bucky hesitated, fingers flexing at his sides, before reaching forward and grasping Loki by the waist. They pressed their foreheads together again, luxuriating in the soft brush of their noses against one another, and then Loki nipped at Bucky’s lips.

That seemed to be all Bucky needed to let go of whatever had been keeping him in check. His hands began to roam up Loki’s sides, and he kissed back with open-mouthed fervor, chasing Loki’s lips, worrying his lower one, slipping his tongue between them to taste. He kissed like Loki had never been kissed before—practiced, smooth, familiar. As though this were their hundredth kiss instead of their first. All those relatively chaste dates had made Bucky an expert with his tongue, Loki thought to himself dazedly, and with only a twinge of jealousy.

Without breaking the kiss, Bucky nudged them over to the bed where they arranged themselves on their sides. When Loki began to run his fingers through Bucky’s hair, he was rewarded with the most delicious moan he had ever heard. He gripped harder, hoping to elicit another. Instead, he got something even better—Bucky’s groin rolling up against his, his growing hardness pressing into Loki’s thigh.

After a traumatizing couple of years, Loki couldn’t believe that something he wanted so very much had worked out so well, so easily, so wonderfully. He would have thought this another dream, or another illusion, but Bucky’s nails raked across his shirt and left a tingling sensation that was all too real.

“Glad you changed before you came,” Bucky mumbled. He sounded drunk, even though he wasn’t.

“What do you mean?” 

Bucky began to tug the back of Loki’s shirt out of his slacks. “Wouldn't know how to get your Asgard clothes off. ”

“Perhaps I could teach you,” Loki said. “I could sail here after a banquet and let you ravage me in my finest.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said absently, seeming too frantic to put his hands on Loki's body to talk. “Yeah, I'd like that.”

Loki licked a stripe up the side of Bucky’s neck, just as he’d wanted to do in the elevator only a couple of hours ago, when he’d been so convinced he would never be able to. The combination of joy and relief and lust choked him when Bucky shivered in response.

“What the hell was that?” Bucky wiped the wet spot with the back of his hand, a confused look on his face.

“Take your clothes off,” Loki growled when his fingers failed three times to unbutton Bucky’s fly. “Now.”

“Should’ve guessed you’d be bossy about this, too.”

But he complied anyway, shimmying down his dress slacks and dragging his underpants along with them. Loki followed suit. The harsh electric light of this world had always cast odd shadows on everything, but today Loki loved how it showcased the relief of Bucky’s neck, the soft shade on his muscles, the darkness of his brown nipples.

Loki and Bucky had seen each other naked many times, when changing, but was different. Loki had never seen Bucky like this, hard and wanting, for him. He couldn't stop staring, feeling that he'd won a prize. And from the dazed look on Bucky’s face as his eyes raked up and down Loki’s body, he was experiencing a similar sense of wonder. His gaze was so heated that, for once, Loki felt little fear that he was failing to measure up.

Bucky pulled Loki to him again and proceeded to pay back in spades all the physical affection he had withheld for so long. He rolled Loki over onto his back and reverently kissed his way down Loki’s body, as though every inch of him were a precious treasure. He covered him in little nips and nuzzles and licks to his nipples and worked his way down to Loki’s navel until Loki was a writhing mess of need.

“Bucky,” he moaned, shivering when a lock of Bucky’s hair flopped forward and tickled his stomach.

“Wanted this so bad,” Bucky whispered, almost to himself.

Loki pulled him up by the head to kiss him deeply. Their cocks brushed against each other and they both froze in surprise, as though they both realized in that moment how different this was from any of their previous days together.

“What did you want? Tell me,” Loki asked, kneading Bucky’s ass and thrilling at the idea that Bucky had fantasized about him. “What did you imagine when you wanted this?”

“Lots of things,” Bucky said between sucks on Loki’s earlobe. “Wanted to kiss you that day we had that picnic in Central Park. Every time you slept over here, I wanted this, exactly this. And that day we took Susan and Steve to the Stork Club... I felt like the world’s biggest goddamn asshole, getting a hard-on from feeling you next to me, watching your knee keep time, feeling your leg rub against mine. And you didn’t even know. You weren’t thinking about that at all, and Susan was right there and…”

“What else?” Loki gasped as Bucky bit harder on his ear, ground his hips harder against Loki’s. “When else did you want me?”

“Sat in the chair over there sometimes and wished you were in front of me, on the floor…”

“All right, off you go.” Loki rolled Bucky off him.

“What—”

“In the chair. Go on.”

Loki walked Bucky over to the armchair, placed him in it, and pulled him forward by the hips so that he sprawled low and half off the chair, legs spread wide. 

“I hope you appreciate what a singular moment this is,” he said. “A prince of Asgard kneels to no one. Yet here I am, kneeling before you.”

“Yeah, all right,” Bucky said stupidly. 

He placed his hands on Bucky’s knees, and was rewarded by Bucky’s hands resting atop his, fingers winding together. He’d done this many times before, though never on his knees, and never with a desire to savour the act. He’d never cared beyond satisfying his partner just enough to move on to the business of fucking, of chasing his own pleasure. But today, with Bucky splayed out before him, Loki wanted to draw this out.

Loki began kissing the inside of his thigh, locks of his hair brushing against Bucky’s balls. He gave an exploratory lick up the side of his cock, very quickly before pulling back. Bucky gasped and tried to lean forward, but Loki held him in place with superior strength and steadied him by clasping his fingers harder. He gave another lick, and made a move as though to take Bucky into his mouth, but then stopped, looked up, and smiled.

“Loki…” Bucky begged, and for the next few minutes, as Loki teased him, he could emit nothing but strangled groans.

When Loki finally trailed kisses up his cock, Bucky’s eyes went as round as a full moon.

Loki shifted his lips down the shaft, enjoying the slide, the taste, the way the thickness stretched his jaw and the way the head of Bucky’s cock slid along the roof of his mouth. He moaned around it and felt Bucky’s legs relax around his head.

With relaxation, Bucky began talking. Single words to start, but then phrases—breathing Loki’s name, complimenting him, describing how good his mouth felt, how this was everything he’d wanted…

Bucky touched him everywhere he could reach. He massaged Loki's shoulders, pushed down on the top of Loki's head and rode his mouth until he remembered himself and let go, apologizing (Loki wished he wouldn't; he'd never been manhandled like that before, and would never in a million years admit it, but he loved it). All the while, he babbled ludicrous nonsense, with increasing fervor as he neared his peak.

Eventually, Bucky said something so ridiculous that Loki couldn't hold the laughter in any longer.

“No, no, don’t stop,” Bucky said before he realized that Loki had started to choke.

Loki sat back on his heels and held up a finger, signaling that he needed a moment.

Bucky seemed to awaken from a haze. He tipped Loki’s head upwards and patted him on the back as though Loki were truly in danger. "What's wrong? Did I—”

It took Loki a few attempts through his laughter before he could get it out. "My mouth feels like Christmas dinner?"

"What?"

"Christmas dinner. That’s what you said. Bucky, you just likened me to ham and yam. Do you even hear the things you say?"

Bucky was almost unshamable, but Loki had managed to do it. The blush that crept up his cheeks was the most endearing thing Loki had ever seen, and he felt his affection crest as he watched.

“Not really. I just knew I liked it and... I kind of go into a zone.”

“Well, you come out with the most unbelievable rot.”

Bucky shifted in the chair to lean forward and kiss Loki. "You're really good at this. It’s even better than I thought it could be. I never thought we could… I…” His voice dropped to a hesitant whisper. “I wanna make you feel just as good.”

Loki had enjoyed the previous string of compliments and knew them to be genuine, nonsensical though they were. However, he appreciated even more this lucid appreciation, especially given Bucky’s ingrained repression of his own desires. And the idea that there was still so much more to learn about Bucky, whom Loki knew better than anyone, save Thor, that there was a whole new side to explore, new quirks to laugh at, new tells to decipher… it was exciting. Almost as exciting as what they were doing at this moment. He gasped when Bucky reached for Loki’s straining erection, holding it for the first time. Bucky began rubbing his thumb into the pre-come leaking from the slit.

“Bucky,” Loki moaned, thrusting weakly into the touch.

Bucky began slowly, shyly, but he picked up speed and strength as Loki’s gasps of pleasure gave him confidence.

“Is this good?” he asked, the hopefulness in his voice making it clear that he had never done this to another man before.

Nothing in Loki’s life as prince had never made him feel so special, nor so loved. He nodded, but although he had been aching to be touched, he wanted even more to see Bucky come, to give him that pleasure. Loki loosened Bucky’s fingers from his cock and kissed them before repositioning them to tangle in his hair so that he could redouble his previous efforts. He skillfully dragged moan after moan from Bucky’s throat, as well as more silly nonsense, until he felt Bucky shake around him and tasted bitter seed. Then he licked lightly along the underside and slurped off.

Loki sat back on his heels and watched Bucky catch his breath.

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky panted. His gaze traveled down to where Loki’s neglected cock dripped pre-come onto the rug. He slid out of the chair and pushed Loki onto his back.

“There’s no…” Loki said, but there was actually no protesting the stubborn, determined, slightly nervous look in Bucky’s eye as he knelt between Loki’s spread legs.

Bucky bit his already kiss-swollen lip and stared at Loki’s cock for a painfully long second, before bending down and taking the head of it in his mouth.

Loki moaned, wanting more, wanting everything. He had always prided himself on his control, but Bucky’s mouth was warm and wet and _Bucky’s_. For all the experience he had sought out, both in an effort to make up for his late bloom and also to try to match Thor’s numbers, he had never once been held like this, sucked like this, with nuzzles to the hair above his cock, fingers massaging his hip, sporadic little kisses to the head, loving licks on his foreskin, happy hums throughout. The technique was all wrong—too much tooth, lips catching awkwardly on the upstroke, jerky rhythm—but it didn’t matter. Within barely a couple of minutes, he could feel heat pooling at the base of his cock, electricity all the way down to his toes.

“Bucky, I can’t… I’m so close… You…”

Bucky dug his fingers into Loki’s hips and held him down as he came harder than he ever had. He swallowed all around, keeping Loki deep in his throat until Loki eased him off. Bucky smiled tenderly down at him before shoving a box out of the way to lie down beside Loki.

They held hands and stared at the ceiling, enjoying the moment in companionable silence. Then Bucky laughed, apropos of nothing.

“What?” Loki asked.

“I guess… I’m officially a cocksucker now. Who’d a thunk?”

Loki rolled his head to the side to look at him. “I must confess, I never saw what was so bad about it.”

“Yeah. It was pretty nice. I mean, the noises you made.” Bucky gave him a sheepish grin.

Loki watched a few emotions play across Bucky’s relaxed features, admiring the sparkling blue of his eyes, the expressive tilt of his eyebrows, the kissable cleft of his chin, the lovely contrasts in his coloring. He ran his fingers down the center of Bucky’s lean but chiseled chest, feeling the soft but sparse dark hair there.

“What?” Bucky asked when Loki’s eyes must have gone even more doting than before.

“It’s just that… You are very good-looking,” Loki said, realizing the truth of it only as the words fell out.

Bucky laughed. “You sound so surprised. People usually figure that out _before_ they decide to suck someone’s dick.”

“It didn’t seem relevant.” Loki thought back to something his mother had said recently. “Rather, it’s merely convenient, a happy coincidence.”

Bucky smiled. He seemed to understand. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. Do you know… Do you know how it started for me?”

“Obviously not, as I had no idea until today. Tell me.”

“It was when you first came back from your big trip and you showed up here, in this room. When I looked up, for a split second, I… I didn’t recognize you. The last time I’d seen you, we were just kids. But now… You looked different and _good_ and all I could think was, ‘Humina humina.’ Then my brain caught up with what was going on and that it was _you_. I... I thought I'd be able to shake it off, go back to feeling the way I always had. But I didn't. Couldn't. And then pretending all the time that nothing had changed...” He sighed. “It’s been fucking miserable.”

Loki scooted over and hoisted himself on top of Bucky, holding him with every limb, like an octopus. “Well, it’s over now. No more pretending.”

Lying on the floor as they were, they felt rather than heard the front door shut downstairs and a weary tread of footsteps begin to plod up the stairs. Slight, but too steady to be Aunt Helen’s.

“Fuck,” Bucky said, wriggling out from Loki’s grasp and looking frantically at their nakedness. All the lazy happiness of a moment ago dissolved into panic. “Fuck, fuck, we can’t…”

Loki sighed. It appeared he’d spoken too soon. The pretending was far from over. He had been foolish to think otherwise, even for a minute.

They jumped to their feet. Bucky flung open a window in an effort to rid the room of the smell of sex. He began putting his underpants back on, tripping over himself in his haste, while Loki dove for his clothes and coat. He’d barely gathered the bundle in his arms when the doorknob began to turn. Bucky shot him a desperate look, and with another sigh, Loki cast an invisibility spell around himself.

When Steve walked in, he saw nothing but Bucky putting on a shirt.

“Hey, Steve,” Bucky said in a higher than normal pitch.

Like Loki, Steve knew Bucky too well to fall for this act. His eyes narrowed as he took in the scene. “What are you doing? Why’s the window open? It’s December.”

“Thought it was kinda stuffy in here, is all.”

“You know, it’s fine if you wanna smoke. You don’t have to be weird about it. My asthma’s not as bad as it used to be.”

Loki, still naked, stood quietly behind Bucky and frowned. The conversation reminded him of their recent argument; he was still angry, but too happy to let that emotion win at this moment.

“You going out?” Steve asked.

“Yeah. Yeah. Just, uh, wanted to get out of these work clothes first.”

Steve hung up his coat and then loosened his tie to put it away. “I’m starved. I’ll come with.” And then, when Bucky flinched, he asked, “What?”

“It’s just that…” He looked about to lie, but then something in his posture changed, some new resolution, some leftover courage, or perhaps it was simply his usual aversion to lying to Steve. Meaningfully, he said, “Luke’s back.”

“That was quick.” Steve nodded slowly, as though deliberating the right words with which to continue. Just as meaningfully, he said, “Things didn’t go so great with that girl?”

“Understatement of the century, pal.”

“You don’t sound that sad about it.”

“I’m not. It actually…” With another burst of determination, Bucky continued, “I’m on my way to his hotel.”

“So… not for dinner.” The question was glaringly implicit; they both seemed to understand the truth they were talking around.

“No. Not for dinner.” Bucky paused. “Wait. You knew?”

“‘Course I knew. What do you take me for?” Steve was quiet for a minute, watching Bucky and rocking on his heels as he took it all in. 

Bucky grew visibly defensive as the silence stretched (and Loki wished they would hurry this along, because standing still as a statue, holding his clothes, was becoming uncomfortable). 

“What?” Bucky finally snapped.

But Steve looked rather pleased, almost smug. After a reflective silence, he said, “Finally pulled his head out of his ass, huh?”

Bucky grinned back at him, relief clear in his posture. “It’s still most of the way in there, but… yeah.”

Loki kicked him in the back of the knee, mostly to vent his own embarrassment at having failed to understand what Steve had been getting at that day. Because, of course, it now became crystal clear, just as everything else had.

“What the hell?” Steve asked, reaching out to steady Bucky, who’d buckled, seemingly for no reason.

“Nothing. Just a pain in the neck,” Bucky grunted.

“A pain in the neck that makes you fall over?”

Bucky had finished dressing and was ostensibly now looking for socks, but Loki watched him slip the wallet—the smaller, more grown-up version of the purse that Loki had made after his sojourn—into his pocket. “I probably won’t be back until tomorrow. Cover for me with Aunt Helen?”

“I’ve got a feeling you won’t be back until the day after tomorrow. But yeah, I’ll cover for you.”

Bucky pulled Steve into a tight hug, which both distracted and moved him out of the way enough for Loki to tiptoe his way to the door.

“Are we good?” Bucky whispered.

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen that dopey, happy look on your face. Why would I not be good with that, especially after watching you make yourself so miserable for so long?”

Bucky ran his fingers through his mussed hair. “‘Cause… you know.”

“Look, I still think something shifty’s going on with him and I still don’t like that he’s got you wrapped up in whatever it is. And I still think he’s kind of a jerk. But you’ve known him long enough that I guess you know what you’re doing by now. Other than that…” Steve shrugged. “Just don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

“I’ll try. But you know me, so no promises.”

“Yeah, I know you. You dumb lug.”

Bucky gave Steve a parting noogie, and Loki tried not to gag. He followed Bucky out of the room, keeping his hand on Bucky’s back so he’d know where Loki was.

“I have to get dressed,” he hissed when it seemed that Bucky was about to leave the house.

“Right.” Bucky busied himself in the kitchen, pouring himself a glass of water to pass the time until Loki took his hand to signal that he was ready.

Loki held Bucky’s hand and watched his face, the way steam escaped from his nostrils and curled up around his head, like a beautiful dragon in human form. They waited until they reached a pedestrian-free block to speak again and for Loki to become visible.

“He wasn’t mad,” Bucky said, mostly to himself. “I can’t believe…”

“He was also correct,” Loki said, grudgingly.

“Huh?” Bucky asked, only mildly startled to see Loki visible again. He loosened their joined fingers at the first sight of someone turning the corner.

“You do look rather dopey when you’re happy. He was right about another thing, too.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“I’m certainly not letting you go before Sunday.”


	18. Chapter 18

A long, thin paint crack ran along the ceiling of their hotel room, near the white line of the crown moulding. Loki had been tracing it with his gaze, back and forth, back and forth, for the past couple of minutes. He imagined Bucky had spent the time similarly, but he lacked the courage to look over and check.

“Well,” he eventually said.

“Yeah,” Bucky replied.

They lay side by side on the rumpled, sex-dampened linens, separated by a foot of physical space and a mile of awkwardness. 

“Are you… How do you feel?” Loki asked, even though Bucky’s expression when he’d rolled off him had answered the question quite explicitly. 

“I, uh, need another minute.” Bucky gulped, and then whispered, “I think I’m leaking.”

“That is normal.”

“What about the, you know… the open feeling. How soon does that go away?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Bucky turned to face him for the first time since Loki had finished. Sensing the movement, Loki turned to look at him in return.

“I thought you’d done this before,” Bucky said.

“This is the first time I’ve stayed long enough afterwards for a… a cuddle,” Loki replied, even though they were hardly cuddling right now, a fact that stung. “And I’ve never been on the receiving end.”

Bucky hoisted himself up onto his elbow and glared down at Loki. “You _what_? So you won’t, but I—”

“Well, there’s my position as prince, you see. I shouldn’t…” Loki changed tack when he saw Bucky’s dark stare. “I mean, I never wanted it _before_. I’ve never trusted anyone before. But I trust you. I want to with you. We can do it the other way next time, if you like.”

“Oh. Okay.” Bucky relaxed his shoulders, which had bristled their way almost up to his ears. He flopped onto his stomach, wincing as he did so. “I don’t know, though. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“If it hurt, why did you insist that I keep at it? I could have stopped. I even offered to.”

“I figured it would get better. Girls don’t usually like it the first time either,” Bucky said, with unconvincing charity. 

“Was it truly so unmitigatedly odious?”

“Unmitigatedly odious?” 

“All bad.”

“No. There were a couple of times when you hit a good spot. Don’t know what you did, but those two, uh, thrusts were nice. And the rest of the time wasn’t… I wouldn’t say it was bad, just sort of…”

Loki went back to looking at the crack in the ceiling. “I’m accustomed to more praise than this.”

Bucky snorted. “You’ve mostly only done it in a brothel, or with people who’ll never see you again, or who are too scared to say what they think. I’m not like them. I’m always gonna be straight with you.”

Loki’s temper was already in the process of wandering off and getting lost, but Bucky hastened to put a finger to his lips and kiss his shoulder.

“Everything else we’ve done has been aces. This’ll be fine, too. We just need a little more practice.”

“I maintain that Vaseline was the wrong choice,” Loki said, still feeling defensive. “We should have taken advantage of the olive oil on the dining cart, per my suggestion. It’s a little runnier than I would like, but the closest to what we use in Asgard.”

Bucky shook his head. “And I told you, that just sounds wrong. At least Vaseline is supposed to go on your skin.”

“You must hear how irrational you sound.”

“Don’t care. Anyway, what if you asked someone if there’s something we’re missing? Maybe one of the guys you—”

“You’re sending me back to the brothel? After all this?”

“Not to fuck anybody,” Bucky said quickly, and with just enough angry possessiveness to soothe Loki’s raw feelings. “Just to ask some questions. It’s not like there’s anybody _I_ can ask. Unless you have a better idea.”

“I’ll sort it out,” Loki said, already plotting how to change his appearance for what would be a terribly embarrassing appointment in town.

“I should clean up,” Bucky said, a little mischief reentering his voice. “Wanna join me?”

Loki had been halfway to calling this entire romance off out of sheer mortification, but Bucky quirked an eyebrow, and that was all it took to rouse him from the bed. They held hands all the way into the bathroom. Loki turned on the faucet, bracing himself for the always strange moment when the water began gushing from the shower head. Bucky climbed into the tub behind him, put his arms around Loki’s waist, and nuzzled into the valley between his shoulder blades. 

Water poured down around them, sudsing up the soap that Bucky rubbed in abstract patterns on both of them. Even though the water was warm, Loki shivered and let his head hang as Bucky began to pepper his back with kisses. The scruff from Bucky’s unshaven face scratched pleasurably. Soon, Loki could feel the insistent press of Bucky hardening against him. 

“I know I said the next time, I would want you to…” Loki whispered, wondering where this might be heading... He knew, in this moment, that he’d meant what he’d said. That he wanted this, with Bucky. 

“No, not right now. That’s not what I’m…” Bucky kissed Loki’s shoulders again. “I’ve been thinking about this for awhile,” he said, low and ticklish Loki’s his ear. “Getting you dirty. Showering you clean.”

While he had wanted Bucky as a permanent and normal fixture in his life for as long as he could remember, Loki had not consciously wanted any of _this_ for nearly as long. He felt a stab of guilt each time Bucky confessed one of these long-held fantasies, because he had no matching response to give. This guilt was partly why his failure of a few minutes ago stung so painfully. Ever since checking into the Bossert, Loki had been doing his best to make up for the newness of his feelings by gratifying all of Bucky’s long-repressed desires. 

He pressed back, assisting Bucky, who had begun to rub his hardening cock along the wet crease of his ass. Loki had come too recently—and too often in the past twenty-four hours—to respond, but he let Bucky give the affection and take the orgasm that their efforts of a few minutes ago had failed to facilitate. It wasn’t long before Bucky was gasping into the back of Loki’s neck and clutching his shoulders more tightly. Loki felt a flash of something hot at the small of his back before it was almost immediately washed away. He craned his head around to kiss Bucky’s still open and panting lips. 

No, he told himself. Nothing could convince him to call this off. Ten minutes of awkwardness couldn’t nullify the fact that the past twenty-four hours had been the happiest he could remember. Ten minutes couldn’t wipe out the quiet joy that almost every day spent in this place, every day with Bucky, had given him over centuries.

When they had finished washing, Bucky availed himself of the fluffy white robe hanging behind the bathroom door. On his way back to the bedroom, he snatched some berries from the lunch cart that they had not yet called to be taken away. He dragged an armchair closer to the bed and dropped carelessly into it. 

Loki had never liked the feeling of terry-cloth; however, since Bucky had covered himself for the first time since they’d checked in (even when the room service had come, they’d been naked; Loki had glamoured them into clothes and different faces), he decided to pull on his undershirt and underpants of the day before. He picked at the rest of the cheese and emptied the bottle of champagne into the two glasses. 

Bucky propped his feet up on the rumpled comforter, eyes dancing as he watched Loki. “Just look at this. Us. Showering and champagne. Like a couple of swells. Do you remember the day we met? We were just a couple of little squirts. Did you ever think we’d…” 

“No, of course not.” Loki poured from one glass into another to balance the portions, musing. “Do you think if we had met now... If I had only just now discovered the cave’s magic, would we still have ended up here?”

“No,” Bucky said, too readily for Loki’s liking.

“What? Why not?”

“I mean, you're kind of an asshole.”

“What,” Loki sputtered, but Bucky kept going.

“Look, I know there’s more to you than that. But if I met you now, I probably wouldn’t see it, wouldn’t have a reason to get past that. The same goes for you. By the time you realized I was just some human, you were in too deep to drop me. But if you met me now, you’d know immediately what I was, and you wouldn’t give me the time of day. But it doesn’t matter. We didn’t meet now. We met then. And here we are. We’re good.”

Loki slowly nodded, but with each jerk of his head, remembered how very ‘not good’ things actually were. They’d spent the entire weekend so far doing nothing but kiss, eat room service, rut against one another, and nap. However, they both knew this was but a dreamy intermission. Loki had not forgotten Bucky’s mysterious distress in the elevator of his office, nor his promise of a later explanation. He had not forgotten all the news from the Nornheim trip that he still needed to share—developments that had become even more pressing, given their new status quo.

From the way Bucky’s lips pursed, his mind was running along similar lines.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” they said simultaneously, and then laughed, both breaking into their individual nervous ticks (Bucky fingering his hair back, and Loki kneading at his knuckles).

“You first,” Bucky said.

“All right.” Loki moved the pillows out of the way so that he could sit on the bed, with his back against the headboard, legs long, damp, and goose-pimpled before him. “Well, there was a portion of my voyage that I didn’t tell you about.”

“How? That was already more story than anybody’s ever had to tell about anything.”

“It was nothing bad. It was, in fact, a great positive. The only positive to come out of the entire farrago. I’ve told you about the Norns, haven’t I?”

“A little bit, years ago. But I know about them from the books. You know, the ones about you all.”

“Then who knows what misinformation you have read,” Loki grumbled. He proceeded to describe the reality behind the tales, as well as the story specific to him—the gift of the knife and the knowledge of the apple.

“Wait, so you’re saying you can do it? You can make it go both ways?” Bucky bounded out of his chair as though ready to leave right at that moment. 

“Yes. And more than that. No more reliance on childhood objects. No more mismatched lengths between visits. You will be able to stay apace with me. We can be together forever, in real time.”

“So, when can we go?” Bucky said, not seeming to comprehend what Loki was saying, too excited by the possibility of a visit. 

Loki had hoped Bucky would be more excited about longevity, about shedding his mortal state so they could be together. He was a little disappointed to see Bucky slower to embrace that aspect of the news. But then again, Bucky’s lifelong wish hadn’t been to become an Aesir; it had been to see Asgard. And Loki had just promised to grant it, at long last.

“I haven’t yet worked it out,” Loki confessed.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” 

“I only got back a week ago, and the runes are complicated,” Loki said peevishly. “The Norns didn’t leave me an instruction manual. But it shouldn’t take me long to learn the language and incantations.”

Bucky fell back into his seat, suddenly deflated. “We really have the world’s shittiest timing, don’t we?”

“What do you mean? The timing is fine. It won’t be so long, not for you. A matter of weeks or months, at most.”

“I don’t know if I’ve got months.”

“What are you talking about?” Loki asked, because Bucky was the picture of health; the idea of him sickening and dying any day was preposterous.

“Pearl Harbor was hit while you were away,” Bucky said slowly, gravely, as though the words ought to mean something to Loki.

“And Pearl Harbor is…?” Loki hadn’t even the first guess what Bucky was talking about, nor what it had to do with this unexpected bout of hypochondria. 

“It’s an army base in Hawaii.” When Loki stared blankly at him, Bucky explained further, “You know Hawaii. It’s a US territory. The islands with the volcanoes. Where that Bing Crosby movie was set. Uh, ‘Waikiki Wedding’.”

“A disappointing film, which underutilized his voice.”

“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that it was an unprovoked attack on American soil.”

“What does it have to do with you?” Loki asked, but a slow-dawning understanding filled him with horror.

“The US _had_ to enter the war after that. So, now it’s on. And I… I enlisted. To fight. I’m supposed to report for basic training in Virginia in two months. I thought it would be sooner, but thousands of guys signed up last week, and now there’s a wait.”

“You did _what_?” Loki roared. He had scrambled off the bed halfway into Bucky’s explanation and begun shaking him by the shoulders. 

“It’s the right thing to do,” Bucky said firmly, despite the quaver of fear in his voice. He pushed Loki’s hands off him, and held them tight, pressing them into his thighs. “Hell, it was the smart thing to do. If I didn’t enlist now, I’d have gotten drafted sooner or later. You’ve got more options if you enlist—what division, more opportunities. And it’s more than that. Steve… I mean… I wouldn’t feel like a man if I sat on my ass when he’s so desperate to go and can’t. And my dad fought in the last war. And…” Here Bucky began to deflate, as less compelling concerns slipped out. “And I didn’t know what else to do with myself. Everything with you, and it was never gonna… I thought…”

“You weren’t thinking at all. Bucky, this cannot be your path. You are meant for greater things than to serve as some idiot general’s bullet-catcher!”

“You don’t know they’re idiots.”

“Of course I do. Of course they are. You can’t go. I won’t allow it.”

“It isn’t your decision,” Bucky said hotly. “It’s my life, and my country. It’s my fucking _world_. And up until about five minutes ago, this world was the only option I had. How long have you been promising me a trip to Asgard? How long? I was stuck here, wanting someone who was only ever gonna visit, some guy who was never gonna look at me that way. Wanting someone I shouldn’t have wanted in the first place, for a million reasons.”

“But it is no longer yesterday. It’s today, and these concerns are no longer valid. They are no longer reasons to throw your life away.”

“I’ve got my Ma crawling up my ass about things not working out with Susan. And yeah, you ended up coming around, but it’s not that easy. It’s never going to be real. We’re always going to have to sneak around. I’ve got Steve looking at me with those _eyes_ every time we listen to the news… And that’s just the normal stuff. I haven’t forgotten what’s going on. I haven’t forgotten how you’re gonna overtake me soon and the whole time thing. So yeah, signing up didn’t seem like the dumbest decision. I mean, even now, even if you figure out the runes and get me there, even if you get me this apple, what are we going to do? You really think you can just waltz into dinner with your folks and introduce me as… as whatever we are now? You think you can just tell them I’ll be sticking around forever? You think they’re gonna be okay with that? Especially when you just told me they want to marry you off to somebody important. You really think this is going to work? Any of it?”

Bucky raised valid points, ones which Loki had not yet formulated a plan to solve.

He would, though. And soon. He always did.

In the meanwhile, it seemed that Bucky had some thoughts. They practically beamed from his sweaty forehead.

“What would you have me do?” Loki asked.

“Well, I was thinking,” Bucky said, in the tone that heralded a very sensible idea that Loki was not going to like. “You always say Asgard is in charge of keeping the peace, even in other realms. That they’ve come here before, helped out in a war. What if…”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Loki interrupted, because he could already see what Bucky was asking. “Asgard does not intervene unless the threat is external. We helped in that instance because the Frost Giants had invaded, and had threatened to turn this helpless world into another icy hell. But if the humans want to kill themselves, it’s their business. Odin will never even consider what you ask.”

“Okay. Okay, but what about… Maybe we don’t need the whole Asgardian army. If it was just you and your magic, and Thor and his hammer, and maybe even Volstagg and the gang… They say Hitler’s crazy, obsessed with finding magic, something out of left field that’ll win this war in a heartbeat. Everybody thinks he’s half-cracked. But I know the truth. I know what he’s looking for is real. You and your pals could win the war tomorrow, before many more people have to die. And then I would never have to fight.”

The plan was a logical one, but after the disaster in Nornheim, Loki was in enough trouble as it was, and, per Bucky’s concerns, he was about to be in even more. He couldn’t afford getting mixed up in this foreign war. He wished Bucky could see that doing so would make being together in the long run more difficult, not less.

“For Thor and I to intervene in such a way would go strictly against the—”

Bucky set his jaw, and interrupted, “I guess I’m going to the front then.”

“Are you threatening me?” Loki growled, low and dangerous and disappointed.

“No. Not really.” Bucky let go of Loki’s fingers and slumped back into his chair, giving up. “It’s just… What’s the point of us being friends if I can’t help—”

Loki shook his head. “What’s the point of us being friends if you die in a field in Flanders like anyone else?”

“That was the last war. This one’s not as much in Flanders. I don’t think, at least. I could end up in the Pacific. It depends on where they send me.”

“If they end up sending you anywhere at all. What if I could convince you not to go? What if, before you must report to this camp, I take you to Asgard and show you how your life could be? Convince you to leave all this behind? You have yet to tell me if the prospect interests you. Have you been avoiding the topic for a reason? I have wanted this since before I went on my long sojourn, but I am beginning to suspect that I am the only one. Was I wrong? Do we want such different things after all?”

Bucky squirmed in his chair like an overgrown boy. “I’m never going to be able to leave it all behind like that. I can’t just disappear like I don’t care what happens to this world or the people I know. I’ve already enlisted. What kind of guy would I be if I ran away now? That’s why I’m asking you for help.”

“That isn’t an answer,” Loki pressed. Then thinking of how he might have acted in such a negotiation, he asked, for clarity, “What if I promised to see about your request? It might not be next week or next month, but what if I promised to try? Thor is malleable enough, warmongering enough, reckless enough. In the right circumstance, I’m certain I could convince him to come here with me. With a little more study about how this war is being fought, I could find spells that would make a difference. We could assist without being tied to any army.”

“Yeah. Exactly. That’s what I was thinking of.” Bucky nodded. “There’s also Steve.”

“What about him?”

“I want to at least make him the offer sometime. At least ask if he wants to go… with me. Us. And eat this apple thing. I don’t think he’d take us up on it. But I wouldn’t wanna leave him here without at least asking.”

“Is the idea of a life together so unappealing that the deal must be sweetened with so much else? What other stipulations are required for you to consider this? A few minutes ago, you professed to having wanted me so badly and for so long, but I confess, I don’t really see it.” 

“You’re not just asking me to like you better than anyone else. You’re asking me to like you better than everyone and everything else I’ve ever known put together. You’re asking me to give it all up for a place I’ve never actually seen before. You’re asking me to become something else—something I don’t really know much about. And to keep being it for thousands of years.”

At these words, Loki felt his heart start to crack. “You think you’ll tire of me? Is that what you’re saying?” 

“You’ve got a real knack for missing the point. Anybody ever tell you that?”

“Well, you don’t seem in the least bit excited about the prospect,” Loki said with a plaintive pout. 

“Oh, brother. Look. It’s a great prospect. It’s also a lot to take in, though.”

“So you are genuinely interested in the idea? Or becoming Aesir? Of being together in real time?”

In answer, Bucky crawled out of his chair, pressing Loki back down onto the bed. He ran his fingers through Loki’s long hair and nestled himself comfortably between his spread legs. The gestures brimmed with so much affection that Loki couldn’t help responding, even though he wanted to stay on topic. They kissed, more languidly than they had so far, but with even greater desperation.

“You want this?” Loki repeated, when they drew apart, panting. He needed to hear the confirmation. “You’ll come to Asgard and consider something more permanent than a simple visit? I swear to you that I will find an answer to the challenges you raised. I will make it work. I want nothing more, if you do, too.”

“Of course I’m interested. I didn’t know the details like this could happen, but… I’ve dreamed of this for a long time. As long as I can remember. Just never thought it would be real, so I never really thought it through. So, how about this? You get me to Asgard, I feel it out, and I’ll let you know for sure. If the answer’s yes, we go get this apple, and figure it out from there. Forever.”

“So, I have two months to get you there and convince you,” Loki said with determination. “I will show you such a time that you can’t possibly refuse. Perhaps it won’t be as good as everything you’ve ever known put together, but… I.” Loki breathed deeply and kissed Bucky’s jaw. Quietly, he conceded, “I swear to you. I won’t forget the other things you requested. Steve, and the war.”

He hoped very much that Steve would decline, and that the war would be over before his services would be called upon.

* * *

If Loki had successfully feigned a good humour in the days since his return from Nornheim, it was nothing to his mood now, when his happiness was real. He threw himself wholeheartedly into activities with Thor—riding and hunting and drinking. Anything to make the time pass faster between visits to New York. He spent a requisite few hours a week studying statecraft, just enough to hide how many hours he actually spent learning the language of the runes and the spells required to work the knife. And also to hide how often he disappeared for the afternoon to sail to the island. 

Loki had worried, as was his wont, that perhaps he and Bucky would not be able to weather this change, that perhaps they were meant only for friendship. But a mere handful of visits had proven him wrong. While certain aspects of their relationship had changed—a bit less talking when in private, for example, replaced by more naked kissing—the general tenor of their dynamic had not. While they did spend more time in the hotel than before, their evenings and days outside of it had not changed, in neither venue nor amusement. The haze of satisfied desire and sentiment had not overly smoothed Loki’s personality, nor had it led to Bucky slackening in his comebacks.

Although he worked every day to master spells that would hasten them to the next step, part of Loki wished that this New York winter might never end.

“I had thought you would be disappointed about father’s decision for the succession, brother,” Thor confessed one morning over breakfast. “For years, I have waited for you to let drop this mask of acceptance. And yet I find you more cheerful than since… Certainly before the spell. Possibly ever.” 

“I am simply counting the days until you make a muddle of it and they amend their choice,” Loki said lightly between bites, barely listening. His mind was on the evening he had just spent with Bucky, in the hotel room that he continued to rent by the month. He had taken to going every few months, in order to align with Bucky’s every day.

“I had better try not to do anything too foolish, for your mockery will be unstoppable.”

“Unstoppable _and_ eviscerating.” But Loki smiled as he said it, distracted and therefore unable to project quite the amount of teasing menace he intended. 

“But truly,” Thor pressed. “It is as though you hardly care at all. You seem genuinely happy. I could not be more delighted to see it, brother.”

Loki tried to think of a clever retort, but couldn’t summon the requisite poison. Loki’s mind, usually so focused on seeing slights and festering jealousy, had no room to spare, so full was it of ancient runes. His muscles, usually so pinched in preparation for persiflage, were uncommonly relaxed after hours of sex and spooning. 

On the one hand, Thor was wrong. Loki did care. He cared horribly. Everyone around them had begun to treat Thor even more adoringly, if such a thing were possible. And Loki, by the same token, had receded even further into the shadows. But on the other hand, the shadows allowed him that much more time to pursue his secret projects, to float along on a cloud fuelled by sex and happiness, without anyone noticing. Well, anyone except Thor.

And their mother, as it happened.

“You look so well, dear,” Frigga said, coming in and taking a seat at the far end of the table. “The greenish hint that hung about you for so long has gone, and left you with such a lovely color again.”

“He’s still horribly pale,” Thor argued. “Always has been, even when not enchanted.”

“Pallor suits him,” Frigga said firmly. “I have been speaking with your father, and we have decided that we should do something to celebrate you, Loki, to underscore your new position—”

“My new position? I wasn’t aware that I had one.”

“As central to Asgard’s future,” she said vaguely. “As Thor’s wiser counterpart.”

“I wouldn’t—” Thor blustered, but was hushed by their mother’s raised finger.

“How would you like a state visit?”

“As far as anyone knows, I’ve only just returned from a voyage,” Loki said. He could not risk leaving Asgard just now, not when he might need to sail to the island any day to fetch Bucky. “I’m not ready for another. Not now.”

“I meant as a host.”

This was a privilege indeed, one that not even Thor had been offered. Both brothers were hushed into silence and stared down the table at her. 

“Do you have a particular visitor in mind?”

“Nothing quite so intimidating as you are probably imagining. I was thinking of your friend. Asgard could always stand to improve relations with Vidblain. And Vifill must be very fond of you indeed to have covered up that episode with you. Such devotion should be rewarded. And anyway, I have wanted to meet him. There’s no one else you’ve ever taken to half as much as him.”

“It would be nice to see him,” Loki said absently, but also honestly. Mostly, however, he was still connecting about how his mother had gone from complimenting his looks straight to this, and conjecturing what she (and Father) were really after. 

“So, it’s all settled. We will invite him for a visit. A proper visit, as befitting his position. And moreover yours. Send a formal invitation. Have him come with an entourage. Take excursions to the faraway towns within the realm. This is the sort of thing I did when I was your age.”

“But this is only Vifill, mother,” Thor said. “He’s no different from Fandral or Sif, except that he’s Loki’s friend instead. He doesn’t require such—”

“Just because _your_ friends are too common to deserve formal state treatment does not mean mine are as well,” Loki interrupted, because an idea had come to him. As he dug into it further, the idea appeared better and better.

He’d been so focused on getting the magic to work to bring Bucky to Asgard, but the question of what they would do once Bucky got there had remained an obstacle. It wouldn’t do to let his family know his intentions, or even that Bucky existed, until it was too late to stop them—until Bucky was no longer a human to frown upon. But how to keep him near until such a time when Idunn might send another bushel of apples had been stumping Loki.

This was exactly the opportunity he sought.

“I will invite him presently,” he told his mother. “And begin planning the itinerary. He can come with as many people as he likes, I hope? We can make it a true celebration of Asgard and Vidblain’s alliance.”

“Of course.” Frigga smiled. “You can, of course, send a private letter, but I will arrange for something more official.”

“Thank you, Mother,” Loki said, already plotting.

* * *

Dinner was almost over. There were only the cold remnants of fried food and chicken sandwiches. The diner had mostly emptied out, leaving only a handful of tables, and a bevy of brightly dressed waitresses gossiping idly behind the counter. 

Tonight, Loki and Bucky had gone out with Steve. Loki had found that knowing that Bucky was going home with him had made Steve’s company easier to bear. And Steve being the only person privy to their relationship made him the only person they didn’t have to pretend around. He never said anything, not even when Loki nudged his thigh too close to Bucky’s, or their hands brushed under the table. Steve’s tolerance hadn’t made Loki like him, but it did make evenings when Bucky wanted a more sociable time more palatable.

“What do you mean, you’re going to try again?” Bucky asked, after listening to Steve’s pitiful-sounding day.

“There are enlistment centers all over the city,” Steve replied. “There’s no centralized system for rejections. You’re not marked down as a 4F everywhere. I’ll just keep trying in different neighborhoods. Maybe down in Rockaway. If I get in fast enough, we might even be able to go to basic together.”

Bucky, spewing with disbelief, turned to Loki, cocking a thumb in Steve’s direction.

“Can you believe this guy?”

“The fever for pointless suicide certainly seems to be catching,” Loki said coolly, picking at the fried bits of his mozzarella stick.

Bucky sputtered even more at this. “This is nothing like me. Steve isn’t…”

“If you say it’s different because you can take it and I can’t, I’ll sock you Buck, I swear,” Steve said in that incongruously low voice of his. “Even Luke isn’t saying that.”

“Of course I’m not. These days, you two are more alike than you think,” Loki said meaningfully, still full of reproach about the potion. “These fools at the recruitment office simply can’t see Steve’s increased hardiness. They cannot see that, these days, he barely suffers from the list of ailments written on his records.”

“Huh,” Steve said slowly, questioningly, as though waiting for a ‘but’ or a last-second addition of irony. When neither came, he continued, “Thanks, Luke. Speaking of which, how come you haven’t signed up? For England, I mean.”

“I’m a pacifist,” Loki lied.

Steve snorted. “Sure.”

“Hey, Steve,” Bucky said, before they could argue, and Loki could tell precisely where he was headed, just from the sudden flicker of intensity in his gaze and posture. 

Steve had no way of knowing what was coming, but he, too, knew it was something. “What?”

“What if I told you we could win the war in another way, just like that?” Bucky snapped his fingers. “Would you stop trying to enlist then?”

“What, you and me?”

“Well, more like me and Luke. In a way where no one had to fight anymore.”

Steve looked between them, unimpressed. “How would the two of you win a whole war? Magic?”

Bucky glanced at Loki, silently asking for help. “Sure. Hypothetically, though, you know.”

“Or not,” Loki said offhandedly, just for fun, and not helping at all. He thought Bucky was rather overstating his and Thor’s abilities, because this war was a larger thing than simply one battle. However, he preferred to keep the compliment than to refute it.

“I think magic’s a little too easy to fix what’s gone wrong in the world. We’ve gotta earn a fix.”

“And you know so much of magic, how?” Loki asked, bristling. “You don’t even believe in it.”

Steve furrowed his brow under the flop of his bang. Looking between Bucky’s shifty eagerness and Loki’s apparently warrantless umbrage, he asked, “I thought this was hypothetical.”

“And so it is,” Loki said, and then just to get this all over with, he added, “I do have another question for you, however. As another hypothetical, of course.”

“All right?”

“Have you ever considered living outside of New York?”

“Not really. Buck and I always wanted to see California. If it’s as nice as the pictures, then maybe… sure.”

“What about somewhere farther afield than that?”

“And if I’d be there, too,” Bucky added.

“And you, too, I’m guessing?” Steve said, looking at Loki. At the responding nod he said, “I guess I’ve never thought about it.”

“It might behoove you to begin,” Loki said.

Steve shot Bucky a suspicious look that read ‘we’ll be talking more about this later’, while Bucky shot Loki a satisfied look that promised physically expressed gratitude in the next hour or so for having made an effort in his promises to sweeten Steve to the proposed ideas.

* * *

Loki’s visits had become frequent enough he didn’t need the golden light filtering through Bucky’s bedroom window to know that it was early evening on a Thursday.

“Hey.” Bucky must have just gotten home, because he was still fully dressed; his loosened tie was the only effort to change he had made before summoning Loki.

Loki stood still and rolled the marble in his hand. “If all goes well today,” he said, “this will be the last time I need this. I shall be able to return it to you, at long last. Though you may keep the watch, if you wish.”

“What are you saying? You did it?”

Loki nodded. “This is why I have been away for a few days. I needed to finish before the plan I have put in place begins. And it begins today. Are you ready?”

“Right now?” Bucky asked. 

“Unless you have another engagement.”

“No, let’s go.” Bucky looked around the room. “What do I need to pack?”

“Nothing. Everything you need is waiting for you on the other side. ”

Bucky grimaced. “You make it sound like I’m dying and Asgard is heaven.”

“Hardly. I’ll confess, things for us will be rather complicated for a little while.”

He had already explained his plan to Bucky. How Vifill was set to arrive later that day, how he would bring an entire retinue, into which Bucky could slip unnoticed, and have a room in the palace to himself. How Bucky could stay for as long as it took, either for Idunn to send another basket of the apples or for Loki to propose that the entire party take a pleasure journey to that part of the realm. In preparation, they had spent quite a few evenings wandering through Loki's memories, going over courtly protocol and manners, and refining Bucky's already impressive mastery over the common Asgardian tongue.

“And then what?” Bucky had asked when Loki had first told him, a few weeks prior.

“Whatever we like. We should probably run off to Murias for a short while in order to consolidate a partnership before formally presenting you to my parents. Not anything near as formal as marriage, but formal enough that they couldn’t separate us and make me marry another.”

“What’s Murias?”

Loki had put his finger to his lip as he thought of a comparison. “It’s a bit like Reno.”

“Got it.”

Bucky had been well warned that Loki was close to finishing the project, that it would be any day now, but now that the long-awaited moment had arrived, he was understandably agitated. Despite not needing to pack, he still looked acquisitively around the room, as though there were something he might forget. “I gotta write Steve a note first, at least.”

“Fine. Whatever you need, you should do.” Loki fell into the armchair while he waited.

However, instead of writing, Bucky hovered over the dresser where he’d placed the pad of paper. He grasped the pen tightly without setting it down. Looking behind him at Loki, he asked, “We’ll come back as soon as we’ve got it all figured out and we’ll finally be able to tell Steve everything and ask him if he wants to… And see how we can help with the war.”

“I give you my most solemn oath,” Loki said, and meant it, even though a small part of him hated himself for wanting and needing anyone so badly as to promise so much.

That seemed to be enough to mollify Bucky, because he smiled, nodded, and immediately began scribbling.

“What are you telling him?” Loki asked curiously.

“Just that I have to head out of town for awhile, with you. For the war effort,” Bucky mumbled as he wrote, in a halting rhythm. “And to cover for me with my folks. That the next time he sees me, I might be… different. That I’ll explain, and that it’s all gonna be okay.”

When he had finished, Bucky folded the paper and placed it under the pillow on Steve’s side of the bed.

Loki stood up and pulled a small hook from his pocket. “There must be a hammer in this house, yes?”

While Bucky went down to the kitchen to look, Loki pulled a fraying thread out of the cloth wrapping the knife. He tied one end to the hook and the other to the handle of the knife. By the time Bucky had returned, Loki had cast most of the necessary incantations. Hammering the hook over the top of the closet doorframe took only a moment. 

“What’s the string for?” Bucky asked.

“To help guide us back to the proper place and time when we choose to return, if we choose to return this way, and not via Bifrost.”

When he was done, he drew close to Bucky, and tried to settle both of their nerves with a kiss.

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

“No good idea ever followed that question.”

“Do you trust me?” Loki repeated. He held Bucky’s hand between them, turned upwards. He kissed it and then placed the knife on it.

Bucky looked nervously at the knife. “Sure, yeah. But what are you—”

As soon as he had his answer, Loki slapped his own hand on top of Bucky’s and twisted the knife so that it sliced them both deeply. Bucky yelped and tried to back away, but Loki held on tightly despite the pain. He could feel the blood already starting to flow between their hands—staining the knife, running into each other’s cuts.

“What the…” 

“We have to become one for the magic to work,” Loki explained.

“Couldn’t we have, I dunno, fucked?” Bucky asked, still trying to pull away.

“Poetic—and enjoyable—as that sounds, this spell requires blood.” 

The enchanted blade was the sharpest Loki had ever handled, despite its otherwise ancient and rusty appearance. Blood soon began to drip onto the floor. However, it wasn’t enough. The knife, he had read, ought to glow once enough blood had been spilled on it. But so far it remained as dull as ever. Loki slipped the knife out from between their hands, gritted his teeth against oncoming agony, and sliced up their forearms, all the way to the crooks of their elbows. 

While Bucky yelled, he reached into his pockets for the cloth he had brought. One-handed, began to wrap it around their arms, using his teeth to pull the knot. Almost immediately after he’d forced the second set of wounds to seep into one another and onto the metal, the blade began to glow.

“Loki…” Bucky whispered, and began to wobble on his feet. Blood had already saturated the cloth. Fortunately, Aunt Helen’s oriental rug was of a red-based design.

“It will be all right. I’ll heal you as soon as we get there. I promise. This will take but a minute.”

Loki ensured that the string connecting the knife and the hook over the door was tightly tied. Holding Bucky steady in his freely bleeding arms and muttering incantations, he walked them towards the closet door. The knife glowed brighter and brighter—until it was as bright as Loki’s usual shadow passages had been dark. He reached up with their joined hands to smear blood on the hook. Loki said one last incantation and cut a long gash through the air between the doorframe posts.

When they staggered through, both weakened by blood loss, they did not step into Bucky’s musty closet. 

“My eyes are going out,” Bucky said weakly. 

Loki breathed a satisfied sigh of success. So many years, so much work, but finally, he had done it. 

“It is not your eyes. We are in the cave.”

Bucky tried to look around, but stumbled. “The cave? We’re here?”

“We are here.”

The string was now coming out of the wall, attached to nothing, just as Loki had wished. When he untied it from the knife, it disappeared, but he knew it could be summoned again. He then untied the cloth from their arms, releasing even more rivulets of blood. Leaning on each other, they walked, almost drunkenly, out of the cave and into the morning sunlight.

Since he was a little boy, Loki had dreamed of what Bucky’s face would look like at this moment, beholding Asgard for the first time. 

However, Bucky’s expression, while indeed full of awe, was not quite what Loki had expected.

“It’s official,” Bucky whispered. “I don’t care if you were only a kid. You’re an idiot.”

“What are you talking about?”

Bucky gestured at the vista before them, at the beautiful blue bay and at the shimmering towers of Asgard’s capital city, at the Bifrost in the distance. “How could you possibly think Sistiana was on the other side of the bay from _this_?”

“Well…” Loki began.

But he never got a chance to finish, because Bucky fainted away, crumpling into his quickly outstretched arms. His still flowing blood quickly stained the sleeves of Loki’s jacket a crusty crimson.


End file.
